Hugh's Reviews > Prophet Song

Deserved Winner of the Booker Prize 2023

This is a must read and would be a worthy Booker winner.

The central premise, that Ireland has elected a neo-Fascist nationalist government, union leaders and other enemies of the regime start disappearing, and the country rapidly descends into civil war and poverty, takes a little swallowing, but (as in The Handmaid's Tale) everything that Lynch describes has happened somewhere in the world in modern times, and given the upsurge in populist right wing politics in many western states in recent years it seems a timely and potent warning. The final section also seems a perfect antidote to the "stop the boats" rabble-rousing rhetoric so beloved of the current British government.

The heart of the story is a very human and brilliantly realised tale of an ordinary Dublin woman trying to protect her family in impossible circumstances. At the start of the book, her husband, a trade union leader, is arrested and soon disappears (echoes of Pinochet's Chile). Her own job soon becomes impossible, and her attempts to provide for and guide her four children and a father with dementia are constantly frustrated.