Ioana Balas's Reviews > Prophet Song

Absolutely terrible. With being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 'Prophet Song' has received praise after praise and I have to profoundly disagree. I found it ignorant, selfish, patronising and self-entitled, to name a few of the sentiments I got when reading the text.

Conceptually, it lacks originality. The story follows a mother of 4 in Ireland, facing the fact that her husband has been captured and that her country is turning into a totalitarian state. This is by no means new in literature - '1984' and 'The Handmaid's Tale' are some successful examples of the same storyline. And what made them such hits is the creativity aspect. '1984' looked in depth at the usage of language, at how it molds ways of thinking and its importance in conveying information and accuracy. 'The Handmaid's Tale' approached the subject of intolerance towards minorities exceptionally, with a focus on women, exposing the levels of political power and how they pray on those who are different. The biblical themes are also evergreen as we can see in 2023.

Standing on the shoulders of these giants, 'Prophet Song' doesn't stand a chance. It doesn't bring anything new to this topic. For those who are well-informed about the state of China or North Korea at present, the rise of Nazism or of the Soviet Union, it reads patronising. We have a main character who is shocked that the government would listen to her phone conversations! How dare they?! Even in the US, known for its individualistic policies, these rights have been demonstrated to be blurry at best.

I had hoped that the note of originality would be brought by the location. But apart from the usage of the word 'mam' for 'mum', a few mentions of streets, one of sausages and one of lamb, this didn't read particularly Irish. Meaning that again it gets lost in the totalitarian dystopia realm.

And don't get me started on writing style... the whole book is in these very long paragraphs. And by long I mean ranging from 2 to 5 pages. There are no indications of dialogue, new ideas being introduced within these paragraphs, nothing. And I'm reading it and wondering why, except for the shock value. It makes the information difficult to parse, it adds a lot of heaviness to the dialogue because characters are constantly addressing each other by name to show who's talking (something you wouldn't do in real life, especially if it's a one-to-one chat), so it's both to the disadvantage of the reader and the immersion into the narrative. I am also concerned what this says about Paul Lynch's care for diversity, I understand that people with attention deficit are negatively impacted by this choice especially, because for them parsing paragraphs one by one is essential for following an idea and retaining the gist of it.

I am deeply disappointed to see this on the Booker shortlist.