It’s been a while since I’ve posted any recommendations to this site, but I wanted to say something about a book I finished reading this week – PROPHET SONG by PAUL LYNCH. I’m late to the party (as always) with this one. Lynch won the Booker Prize with it in 2023, and though I’m not a fan of literary awards, I think it deserves all the praise.
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, Larry, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling. Soon, she must decide just how far she is willing to go to keep her family safe.
Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning novel is a devastating vision of a country falling apart and a moving portrait of the resilience of the human spirit when faced with the darkest of times.
This is obviously a very timely read. A few years ago, the idea of an established democracy turning to authoritarianism with people being persecuted because of their beliefs, backgrounds, or vocations would have definitely felt like dystopian fiction. Not so in 2025, when we’re witnessing this happening elsewhere on the news, and here in the UK we have populist politicians threatening to follow the same playbook if they’re elected into power.
But I don’t want to talk about that here, and it’s not the reason for my recommendation. What’s happening globally is, of course, critically important, but if there’s one thing writing six HATER novels taught me, it’s that the internet is not the place for civilised discussions and reasoned arguments. This website certainly isn’t that place, that’s for sure.
PROPHET SONG affected me in the way THREADS did, though no where near as viscerally. At the book’s heart is a story about a regular family, going about their business, who find themselves caught up in an inescapable political and social mess that’s neither of their making nor is under their control. Like the families in THREADS, we get to know the characters through their daily interactions. Unlike THREADS, though, here there’s no single devastating event that alters the course of their lives (or ends them), rather a series of slow burn changes that affect the family, gradually eroding everything they’ve previously known and relied upon.
Lynch’s writing is direct yet descriptive, and the book is written with minimal punctuation (no quotation marks for speech, for example), and only occasional scene breaks, no paragraphs. As a fan of short chapters and snappy dialogue, I found this made the beginning of the book feel like something of a chore at times, but as the story evolves, you’re so engrossed that you begin not to notice. If anything, this ‘streamlined’ way of writing helps convey the helplessness of the family at the core of the book. Once you start a page, you’re committed to huge blocks of text at a time, unable to take a break or pause until you’ve reached the next scene break in much the same way as Ellish is unable to escape the hellish downward spiral that her life is becoming.
PROPHET SONG is an excellent read. It stays with you long after you’ve finished, and like the very best fiction, you’re not only left thinking about the characters in the story, you’re also wondering ‘what if it was me?’
Highly recommended. If you’ve read it, what did you think? I’d be interested to hear. PROPHET SONG is available from all the usual stores.
