Prophet Song

Lynch is one of two Irish Pauls on this year’s pretty decent Booker Prize shortlist, albeit a clear second to his countryman Paul Murray who is the runaway favourite to win. (The Booker features only one woman this year – the British writer Chetna Maroo, who actually ought to win with her exceptional debut Western Lane, but almost certainly won’t.) Where does this leave Lynch? Prophet Song is certainly superbly written. We’re in a present day Ireland abruptly transformed beyond recognition after the right wing National Alliance Party uses a trade union bid for more wages to clamp down on all forms of dissent. Almost overnight Eilish, a mother of four from whose perspective we experience everything that happens, is forced to grapple in quick succession with the disappearance of her husband, the absconding of her son to join the rebel army, and the rapid collapse of all democratic certainties. As a study in accelerating terror, the feverish stream-of-consciousness narrative is alarmingly immersive. And deliberately so: this is a novel – compared favourably to The Handmaid’s Tale – that badly wants to impress on the reader how fragile the line between freedom and fascism really is.

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