“The most we can do is to write intelligently, creatively, and evocatively about what it is like to live in the world at this time.” (Oliver Sacks).
Cecile De Forest, a reader of Prophet Song, argues that the book written from a desperate mother’s point of view couldn’t have been a better choice.
“Her decisions and drastic attempts to save her family rang true as well as her unwise choices. I hurt for her. I was physically hurt. And there were certain passages of writing that were sumptuous and one in particular that I literally shook my head thinking how did Paul Lynch (the author) find those particular words to put together such beauty in the midst of a book so filled with pain and despair,” writes Frost.
While her country slides into totalitarianism and civil war she struggles to keep her family intact. It's a story of complacency “in the face of authoritarianism and indifference to the plights of refugees compelled to leave their homes. This book is about Grief: “the grief for what we cannot control, grief for what can’t be understood, grief for what lies beyond us.” Lynch describes his motivation for the book as; “I find myself coming back to it again and again with characters who are trying to arrive at a sense of dignity of who they are while encountering an inalienable world that does not care for them.”
Alexander Alter in New York Times on Prophet Song terms it a “daring, dark and taxing” story.
As his country Ireland turns into a totalitarian regime, the husband of the female protagonist Eilish, who is a leader of the Teacher's Union, disappears, never to be found with no trace of him anywhere. As the story moves forward, her teenage son also mysteriously disappears from a hospital bed waiting for treatment, eventually feared to be dead without any clue or any reason. Eilish struggles to keep her family alive and survive a challenge throughout the novel. Her world “crumbles into chaos’. This novel is a “breathless prose” (New York Times) with no quotation marks or paragraph breaks. The reading is cumbersome but gradually it becomes comprehensible as well as grippingly engaging as the story moves forward.
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A despotic totalitarian regime’s indifference to human pain and agony, their struggles for basic needs of food and groceries, pathetic condition of toilets in the shelters, humans transported as grain bags was dehumanizing and arousing pain along with a sense of discomfort was disturbing as well as unsettling. It wasn’t an easy read at all. I felt a mild itching and uneasiness as if an insect was crawling on my skin. Something intensely pulsating within my veins as if a tiny bug had entered the blood and was gradually moving inside and feeling a throb getting more intense. This story relates to anywhere where human suffering is marginalized, justice and human dignity ignored, a story of distress any place on the planet: Ireland, Syria, Palestine and Ukraine and the plight of refugees regardless of where they are. A story of a dehumanizing ordeal of injustice, no care and no hope on the horizon. The oppression of a brutal regime reminds the reader of concentration camps, refugee shelters and no conscience or sense of morality or responsibility towards the victims. The extremism, political violence as this book portrays has been compared to the classics like dystopian book “1984” and the “Handmaid's Tale”. The author has described his work as: “ My themes are more metaphysical than political”. The focus is on grief: “The grief of things we cannot control, grief for what can’t be understood, grief for what lies beyond us. I’m going to explode the form, by injecting as much reality into the story as possible.”
The novelist Colum McCann compares Paul Lynch to William Faulkner and Corman McCarthy. “I thought there was real bravery within this book taking on such a big issue at a time when the world is in pieces. I haven’t been knocked off by a book in quite a while” (NYT Dec7, 2023). Sabastian Barry, an Irish novelist said, “ I don’t there is any one like him (Paul Lynch ).”
While his books created waves in England (Red Sky in Morning) and France (the Black Snow) there were ‘muted reception in his own country Ireland. The author remarked, “I felt very misunderstood.” His fourth novel, “ Beyond the Sea” is compared with the work of Herman Melville, Dostoyevsky and Joseph Conrad. Lynch characterizes himself as one trying to arrive at a “sense of dignity” of who they are while encountering an alienable world that does not care for them.” That is how I felt witnessing the wars and human conditions of being ignored, isolated in human turmoil in Gaza, Ukraine and recently close to home in Bangladesh. Lynch’s characters confront “unbelievable hardship and tragedy so the book is “perhaps most unrelently bleak” and “an abstract and distant dystopian tale.” Lynch himself recounts about the book, “I’m going to explode the form by rejecting as much reality into the story as possible. Consider the disregard for the rules of writing with no quotation marks or paragraph brakes.”
Consider it as a protest, maybe a REVOLT by the writer!
Lynch himself personally went through the pain due to tumor in his kidney, later diagnosed as a cancer in 2022. As a reader I felt a mild pain pinching me inside of myself. I felt like something was draining inside of me drop by drop, bit by bit and my body or mind could NOT pinpoint as to where the pain was coming from. Life’s challenges of existential crisis, human yearning of dignity, self-respect and hope struggling to find some sense and meaning are intensified in crisis during wars, being a refugee, struggling for basics in life which I observed and felt all around me. The Race, Color, Caste, Poverty, Gender gap infested with inequity and injustice all around me everywhere in this world where I’m compelled to live with no recourse for the sufferings the victims are given no choice but to ACCEPT them as they come! This is the story of the Prophet Song I just finished reading!
It was no wonder to me when I read a reader Cecile De Forest further writes in conclusion:
“I cried a lot when I finished this book. I’m tearing up now. And I am grateful that we have a piece of writing that encompasses the pain of so many around the globe now. Their voices need to be heard and Paul Lynch gave them a voice."Such aPowerful remark!
It was tough reading this book yet the book gave me an intense feeling of pricking my conscience and it helped to glue on to find as to what really happened to the family of Eilish?
In the end, the motivation to finish the book came from its powerful narration. Though filled with pain, the book evoked a deep sense of despair and empathy, making the experience both cathartic and healing.
Prophet Song is a moving dystopian story of our suffering life, our cries for justice and fairness while crumbling internally in the hand of authoritarian rulers anywhere and everywhere.
At the end it was a beautiful experience reading the Prophet song. Lynch said about his book “opening our eyes to the plight of innocence.”
The Chairperson of 2023 Booker Judge called this book,“a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave.”
A gripping narrative that oozes pain in slow motion where lack of sensitivity of those who hold power over innocent folks causes pangs of angst as if sweat and blood is dripping page after page 300 times. A sensitive reader may grasp for air with a feeling of discomfort inside the chest for her own helplessness and powerlessness.
The last passage barely offers a soft glimmer of hope:“She looks for Molly’s (daughter) eyes but cannot find the right words. There are no words now for what she wants to say, and she looks toward the key, seeing only darkness. She knows she has become one with the darkness, and staying would mean remaining in the dark when what she truly wants is for them to love. And she touches her son’s head and she takes Molly’s land and squeezes them though saying she will never let go and she says to the sea we must go to the sea the sea is life.”
