I didn’t want to read Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize winner, ‘Prophet Song’, because an eminent critic called it ‘soul-shattering’ and I don’t need my soul shattered, thank you very much. But then someone gave me a copy for Christmas, and after gathering dust in my TBR pile I thought, okay then, let’s give it a go. Because a book can always be closed, right? If you don’t like how it is written, or if it happens to be destroying your faith in the world, you can just press a button or slam it shut and move onto something else. That power – to NOT read another word – is one of the reasons that books are so powerful. No one can make you turn the page if you don’t want to.
‘Prophet Song’ hums along like a poem. It has a lilting, mesmeric quality, which took a bit of getting used to – words missed out – pronouns, articles, verbs, punctuation – but after a page or two, I barely noticed. We meet Eilish and her husband Larry, and their four kids, the youngest one a happy ‘accident’ and still a baby. We know we are in Ireland, and we know that some sort of clamping down is going on by the state. There are no specifics. In other words, this could be anywhere – and that is the point. We gather quickly that speaking out against these repressive changes is not a wise option, but then we also think – like Eilish and her family – really, how bad can it get?
The answer is, very bad indeed. The might and haunting horror of this book hangs on the slow, inexorable slide – despite all efforts to adapt and hope – of the once normal world of Eilish and her family into the dystopia of brutality and civil war. Unspeakable things occur, described not in gory details, but through the visceral pain of the family as they endure it. Through it all, Paul Lynch’s lilting, chilling, hypnotic message is plain: Look how easy it is for society to fall apart. Look and beware. Hold fast to what you know is good and right. Treasure every moment that you are granted the luxuries of security, love and togetherness, because there is no telling when they could all be snatched away.
I kept reminding myself that I did not have to read on, that I could simply stop. But somehow, I couldn’t and didn’t. Yes, a part of my soul is in smithereens. But there is another part that has been humbled by the reminder of our duty, always, to bear witness to the sufferings of others, recognising that they might one day be ours.