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The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published December 4, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published December 4, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
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Exhilarating, terrifying and surprisingly intimate, Prophet Song offers a shocking vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother's fight to hold her family together.
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?
Excerpt
Prophet Song
The night has come and she has not heard the knocking, standing at the window looking out onto the garden. How the dark gathers without sound the cherry trees. It gathers the last of the leaves and the leaves do not resist the dark but accept the dark in whisper. Tired now, the day almost behind her, all that still has to be done before bed and the children settled in the living room, this feeling of rest for a moment by the glass. Watching the darkening garden and the wish to be at one with this darkness, to step outside and lie down with it, to lie with the fallen leaves and let the night pass over, to wake then with the dawn and rise renewed with the morning come. But the knocking. She hears it pass into thought, the sharp, insistent rapping, each knock possessed so fully of the knocker she begins to frown. Then Bailey too is knocking on the glass door to the kitchen, he calls out to her, Mam, pointing to the hallway without lifting his eyes from the screen. Eilish finds her body moving towards the hall with the baby in her arms, she opens the front door and two men are standing before the porch glass almost faceless in the dark. She turns on the porch light and the men are known in an instant from how they are stood, the night-cold air suspiring it seems as she slides open the patio door, the suburban quiet, the rain falling almost unspoken onto St Laurence Street, upon the black car parked in front of the house. How the men seem to carry the feeling of the night. She watches them from within her own protective feeling, the young man on the left is asking if her husband is home and there is something in the way he looks at her, the remote yet scrutinising eyes that make it seem as though he is trying to seize hold of something within her. In a blink she has sought up and down the street, seeing a lone walker with a dog under an umbrella, the willows nodding to the rain, the strobings of a large TV screen in the Zajacs' house across the street. She checks herself then, almost laughing, this universal reflex of guilt when the police call to your door. Ben begins to squirm in her arms and the older plainclothesman to her right is watching the child, his face seems to soften and so she addresses herself to him. She knows he too is a father, such things are always known, that other fellow is much too young, too neat and hard-boned, she begins to speak aware of a sudden falter in her voice. He will be home soon, in an hour or so, would you like me to give him a ring? No, that will not be necessary, Mrs Stack, when he comes home could you tell him to call us at his earliest convenience, this is my card. Please call me Eilish, is it something I can help you with? No, I'm afraid not, Mrs Stack, this is a matter for your husband. The older plainclothesman is smiling fully at the child and she watches for a moment the wrinkles about the mouth, it is a face put out by solemnity, the wrong face for the job. It is nothing to worry about, Mrs Stack. Why should I be worried, Garda? Yes, indeed, Mrs Stack, we don't want to be taking up any more of your time and aren't we damp enough this evening making calls, it will be hard work getting ourselves dry by the heater in the car. She slides the patio door closed holding the card in her hand, watching the two men return to the car, watching the car move up the street, it brakes for the junction and its tail-lights intensify taking the look of two eyes agleam. She looks once more onto the street returned to an evening's quiet, the heat from the hall as she steps inside and shuts the front door and then she stands a moment examining the card and finds she has been holding her breath. This feeling now that something has come into the house, she wants to put the baby down, she wants to stand and think, seeing how it stood with the two men and came into the hallway of its own accord, something formless yet felt. She can sense it skulking alongside her as she steps through the ...
Adapted from Prophet Song, copyright © 2023 by Paul Lynch. Used by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Atlantic Monthly Press. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles the reader through ever-heightening waves toward a dark shore, a stark vision of total societal breakdown.
The narrative follows Eilish Stack, a microbiologist living in suburban Dublin with her husband, Larry, the deputy general secretary of the Irish teachers' union, and their four children, the oldest a teenager and the youngest an unexpected, late-in-life baby. Her father, showing early signs of dementia, lives nearby. Eilish's mind perpetually buzzes with the kinds of thoughts about work and kids and home that sustain a privileged, ordinary life held together by the almost invisible braces of a functioning civil society.
Lynch sets this world to spinning when the police arrive at the family home, looking for Larry. The authoritarian ruling party has introduced emergency measures in response to an unstated crisis. The government suddenly appears darkly inscrutable as it sidesteps the usual legal protocols and arrests dissenters, trade unionists—really, it quickly becomes clear, any person who is declared to be a domestic threat. This includes Larry, who after a late-night interrogation is later summarily arrested at a union march without even a nod to his civil rights, which so recently had felt like bedrock to the Irish state. The family's all-too-fragile edifice collapses as the city transforms around them.
Lynch understands that totalitarianism doesn't simply storm into power; all too often it creeps in, exploiting minor, seemingly harmless administrative policies and incrementally asphyxiating democratic mores, leaving only the specter of terror as the ruling party, their ambitions unmasked, declares that those who are not with us are against us. As the novel proceeds, readers follow Eilish through a cold Kafkaesque nightmare in which family members can get no information about missing relatives, and residents of the city can only seek the false safety of silence, as dissent is dangerous. Those who enter the prisons and military hospitals do not return, and those who disappear leave no trace.
Curiously, as Eilish's world collapses, her rational mind begins to work against her. She cannot grasp the gravity of the situation, it seems. How can she make sense of what she experiences, when it falls so far beyond the pale of what she had dreamed possible in a democratic country such as Ireland? Her only sanctuary, then, is denial. She lies to her children about the situation to protect them and explains away the evidence of danger shadowing over her. Stubbornly, she resists help from her sister, across the ocean in Toronto, who reminds her that "History is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave."
Some readers might find Lynch's break from standard formatting and punctuation unsettling—there are no quotation marks or paragraph breaks, so that each section of a chapter consists of long, solid blocks of text. The overall impact of these stylistic choices, however, echoes the intense, immersive description of the novel's world, the creeping dread of no exit and the clutching fear that gains momentum with the book's pace as the nightmare gallops towards its perhaps inevitable end.
Offering some solace to the reader, Lynch's prose can be both unusual and beautiful: "once the lie is known it will remain outgrown from the mouth like some dead-tonguing poisonous flower."
Prophet Song plays into a deep fear—that civilization will fall into conflict and ruin, that fascism will invade from democracy's back door, opening the way for history's never-ending line of bullies and thieves. But, in the end, Lynch reminds us that a democracy's demise may also occur through the stealthy creep of far subtler agents, whether the slow strangulation of individually innocuous statutes or our stubborn insistence that an old reality remains.
Reviewed by Danielle McClellan
Rated 5 out of 5
by Donna McEachern
Extraordinary.
After reading four pages, I realized Prophet Song is a book that possesses the reader, so I read it fairly non-stop in two days. First, this is the most disturbing book I’ve read in years. Second, it’s also an intimate portrayal of a country plunging into chaos, painstakingly demonstrated through one family and specifically Eilish’s internal journey. The author’s style is compelling and anchors the reader to the characters and action. I had no problem with the author’s dialogue pattern, in fact, the dialog style seemed natural. I know others compare the book to periods of history. What I read felt like a keen understanding of human nature. Prophet Song is an extraordinary book.
.
Rated 4 out of 5
by Jill
Chilling
4.5 star rating
Eilish Stack is the main character and the narration in the third person is largely her perspective and her emotions that propel the story from beginning to end.
The narrative is told unconventionally, with no paragraph breaks. This book won the 2023 Booker Prize.
As extremist ideology continues to spread in our country and others, makes this a chilling and disturbing read on so many levels and it will shake you to your core. Many of us have become immune to what is happening in the world today. We have become desensitised to what we read and see on our screens,
In Prophet Song, Paul Lynch brings this horror to our doorstep as we have seen and read about in many other countries. This story takes place in Ireland, however it could be any country that doesn’t realize the ramifications of what an authoritarian regime could do to a country and its people.
Over the course of Prophet Song the tension and pace steadily increase. Eilish has tried to maintain stability and normalcy primarily for the sake of her children. The authoritarian regime has stripped her of her humanity. At one point, Aine, the sister of Eilish says, “history is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave.” Eilish corrects her and says, “is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those who did not have a choice, you cannot leave when you have nowhere to go and have not the means to go.” Aine wants Eilish and family to come to Canada, where Aine and her family live.
Rated 3 out of 5
by Anthony Conty
Not to Everyone's Taste
“Prophet Song” by Paul Lynch would seem like a novel stunt if many award-winning Irish books did not seem similar. There are not many paragraph breaks and quotation marks here. You get the point of dystopian suffering even when unsure what is happening. Although this is fiction, it echoes the complicated fears of the Irish today.
Eilish Stack is a typical Irish wife and mother. Still, her husband is a trade unionist for the country’s workers, a controversial position that results in his sudden capture and eerie interrogation. Ireland descends into chaos and confusion, and the author has the challenge of projecting the nation's bewilderment without confusing the readers. Their leaders are paranoid, vicious, and suffocating.
There is a lot of detailed setup and character development, but I was most interested in the main plot’s story arc: this woman living without her husband and at risk of losing her son. Eilish hangs onto the past because nothing about their future seems promising.
History reminds us that The Troubles eventually improved, but we do not see it coming here in Dystopia.
The echoes of modern culture, where doubt and skepticism surround news from specific sources, resonate strongly. When the government controls information, confusion reigns. The depiction of war from within adds an extra layer of mayhem, mirroring the complexities of our world. The perspective of an innocent resident creates a palpable sense of claustrophobia, drawing the reader into the narrative.
The writing style, characterized by long sentences and much longer paragraphs, may initially feel overwhelming. However, it quickly immerses you in the narrative, intensifying the sense of loss and bewilderment. This is not a book for those seeking an easy, low-key read. The subject matter and writing quirks ensure a challenging, thought-provoking experience.
In Paul Lynch's novel Prophet Song, the enactment of an Emergency Powers Act sets in motion a sequence of destabilizing events that will eventually lead to societal dissolution and civil war. The Act provides the legal justification for an authoritarian government, through its newly formed secret police force and military, to bypass normal protections and institute human rights violations against its own citizens under the guise of national security measures. Throughout the novel, characters question how it is possible that an elected government in a democratic country such as Ireland can ignore the constitution in hammering its crushing new restrictions into place.
American readers may also find themselves reflecting on how realistic such a nightmarish vision might be in the United States. What exactly are emergency powers, and how are they activated? How are governments meant to utilize these powers? Would it ever be possible in America for a ruling party to misuse this tool to supersede regular privacy and protection laws and suppress the rights of its own citizens?
In fact, most countries have some version of an emergency powers act that allows a government, in certain circumstances, to take swift actions that would not normally be permitted in order to protect its citizens. In the United States, the National Emergencies Act is brought into play whenever a president declares a state of emergency during a crisis such as a natural disaster, civil unrest, armed conflict, medical pandemic or epidemic or other biosecurity risk. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, "The purpose is simple: to temporarily enhance executive power during unexpected crises that are moving too fast for Congress to respond."
The value is clear. Under normal circumstances, creating new laws in the United States involves quite a bit of time and debate within the various branches of government in order to adhere to the constitution's strict guidelines. However, according to the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, in an emergency, "democratic checks and balances can hamper a government when they need to act quickly. The process for debating new laws can take weeks if not months, which could slow decisive, life-saving action."
In the US, the governmental use of emergency powers can be traced back to legislation introduced in 1775 by the Continental Congress. The first president to declare a national emergency was Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Until the First World War, American presidents utilized such authority purely at their own discretion. Between World War I and 1976, Congress asserted more oversight over emergency laws, but eventually they grew into a convoluted maze of 470 often contradictory laws and statutes. So, in 1976, the National Emergencies Act (NEA) was enacted. It superseded all earlier laws in establishing clear rules governing federal responses to national emergencies. President Ford signed the new Act into law, though he believed it was unconstitutional for the new law to give Congress the power to terminate an emergency without presidential consent. Indeed, this aspect of the Act was later amended, and now Congress can only end emergency declarations through joint resolutions, which require the president's signature.
Other Americans have warned about the law's potential for abuse. Currently, in the United States, there are 123 exceptional powers that become available to a president if he or she declares a national emergency. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, "Many are measured and sensible, but others seem like the stuff of authoritarian regimes: giving the president the power to take over domestic communications, seize Americans' bank accounts and deploy U.S. troops to any foreign country. Given how broad these powers are, it is critical to have adequate safeguards in place to prevent abuse."
Unfortunately, the National Emergencies Act, in its current form, lacks some of those protections. As the Brennan Center notes, "It allows the president to declare emergencies with nothing more than a signature on an executive order, and presidents can renew those emergencies every year ad infinitum." And while it is true that Congress can still take steps to end a state of emergency, "it effectively needs a veto-proof majority to do so." This has in recent years led to worry about unchecked presidential power.
Perhaps, the dystopic vision of Lynch's novel—the collapse of a once stable democracy—is not as far-fetched as we Americans would like to believe. The president's ability to quickly trigger the use of emergency powers can be crucial in a crisis, but there are also risks. As a 2019 New York Times editorial warns: "National emergencies can threaten the constitutional balance even under democratically minded presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But they can be fatal under would-be autocrats, for they provide a seemingly legitimate (and often popular) justification for concentrating power and eviscerating rights."
Filed under Society and Politics
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