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Book Reviewed by:Set in the gothic wilds of Ireland, The Butchers' Blessing is a haunting and unforgettable thriller brimming with secrecy, tradition, and superstition.
Every year, Úna prepares for her father to leave her. He will wave goodbye early one morning, then disappear with seven other men to traverse the Irish countryside. Together, these men form the Butchers, a group that roams from farm to farm, enacting ancient methods of cattle slaughter.
The Butchers' Blessing moves between the events of 1996 and the present, offering a simmering glimpse into the modern tensions that surround these eight fabled men. For Úna, being a Butcher's daughter means a life of tangled ambition and incredible loneliness. For her mother, Grá, it's a life of faith and longing, of performing a promise that she may or may not be able to keep. For nonbeliever Fionn, the Butchers represent a dated and complicated reality, though for his son, Davey, they represent an entirely new world―and potentially new love. For photographer Ronan, the Butchers are ideal subjects: representatives of an older, more folkloric Ireland whose survival is now being tested. As he moves through the countryside, Ronan captures this world image by image―a lake, a cottage, and his most striking photo: a man, hung upside down in a pose of unspeakable violence.
Thrilling, dark, and richly atmospheric, The Butchers' Blessing is an engrossing incantation―mesmerizing in both language and story―conjuring a family and a country on the edge of irrevocable change.
Gilligan asks us to consider why society embraces and celebrates the legacy of some ancient beliefs while dismissing the value of others. By providing equal justification for each character's contrasting desire to either stick to tradition or leave it behind, she avoids sitting in judgement of either mindset, allowing readers the opportunity to draw their own conclusions. Though ostensibly a literary thriller, underpinned by the search for answers concerning the mutilated body presented to us in the opening chapter, The Butchers' Blessing transcends any potential trappings of the genre by opting for a character-driven, slow burn approach...continued
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(Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin).
In Ruth Gilligan's novel The Butchers' Blessing, we meet a small yet devoted group of people who strive to uphold historic, ritualistic methods of cattle slaughter in 1990s Ireland. They do this in accordance with their continued belief in the power of the so-called "Curse of the Farmer's Widow." Born of an ancient folktale of unknown origin, the curse is said to stem from the grief of a bereaved wife and mother. Having lost her husband and seven sons to the brutality of war, she vowed to poison the land of any farmer who failed to honor her grief, demanding that eight men be present for the killing of each animal (one to pay respect to each of the loved ones she lost).
Although this particular scenario is fictional, Gilligan likely drew...
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Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
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Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon
Gilligan braids beauty and brutality together in a seamless literary thriller. With plot twists worthy of Tana French and language reminiscent of Téa Obreht, this young Irish writer has crafted a story that is dark, wild, mythic, unsuspecting, and absolutely riveting.
