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Land
Inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid nineteenth century, "Land", the new novel from the author of Hamnet, is at once intimate and a portrait of a family navigating a legacy of upheaval and loss with love and hope.
436 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2026
About the author
Maggie O'Farrell
53 books21.4k followersMaggie O'Farrell (born 1972, Coleraine Northern Ireland) is a British author of contemporary fiction, who features in Waterstones' 25 Authors for the Future. It is possible to identify several common themes in her novels - the relationship between sisters is one, another is loss and the psychological impact of those losses on the lives of her characters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 9,137 reviews
May 29, 2026
I thought I understood the Irish Potato Famine that killed more than a million people and sent millions more fleeing abroad. But a few years ago, during a tour of Trinity College Dublin, our guide paused to mention the Great Hunger.
He couldn’t have been more than 30 years old, but the fury in his voice had not cooled since the 1850s. The cruelty of the British government, its catastrophic inaction in the face of mass starvation — that wasn’t history to this young man. It felt as raw and immediate as the loss of his own siblings.
Maggie O’Farrell, who was born in Northern Ireland, opens her new novel, Land, in 1865, during the stunned aftermath of the Great Hunger, on the famine-scarred west coast of Ireland. Towns have shriveled. Villages have emptied. Rows of empty cottages have succumbed to rot.
It’s here on a damp, windswept promontory that we find a pair of Irishmen, Tomás and his dutiful 10-year-old son, Liam. They’re working for the British army, part of the enormous Ordnance Survey to map — and further subjugate — Ireland. Despite deeply conflicted feelings about his employer, Tomás is tireless and taciturn. Having survived the famine that took every member of his family, he knows the importance of steady work, the necessity of submission.
“He is the only one of their division,” O’Farrell writes, “who can measure and calculate, draw detailed draft maps in ink for the engravers to copy, and also converse with the people about where the boundaries lie, who owns which field, what this valley or that bluff is called and why, where might the ruins of this building be.”
As she demonstrated in Hamnet, her magnificent novel about the death of Shakespeare’s only son, O’Farrell once again opens up the past like she’s cracking a geode. Suddenly, the undulating fields are sparkling in the moist air, redolent with the incongruous scents of peat and political oppression.
Stomping into a copse to retrieve Liam’s lost boot, Tomás stumbles upon a....
You can read the rest of this review on Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/in-...
He couldn’t have been more than 30 years old, but the fury in his voice had not cooled since the 1850s. The cruelty of the British government, its catastrophic inaction in the face of mass starvation — that wasn’t history to this young man. It felt as raw and immediate as the loss of his own siblings.
Maggie O’Farrell, who was born in Northern Ireland, opens her new novel, Land, in 1865, during the stunned aftermath of the Great Hunger, on the famine-scarred west coast of Ireland. Towns have shriveled. Villages have emptied. Rows of empty cottages have succumbed to rot.
It’s here on a damp, windswept promontory that we find a pair of Irishmen, Tomás and his dutiful 10-year-old son, Liam. They’re working for the British army, part of the enormous Ordnance Survey to map — and further subjugate — Ireland. Despite deeply conflicted feelings about his employer, Tomás is tireless and taciturn. Having survived the famine that took every member of his family, he knows the importance of steady work, the necessity of submission.
“He is the only one of their division,” O’Farrell writes, “who can measure and calculate, draw detailed draft maps in ink for the engravers to copy, and also converse with the people about where the boundaries lie, who owns which field, what this valley or that bluff is called and why, where might the ruins of this building be.”
As she demonstrated in Hamnet, her magnificent novel about the death of Shakespeare’s only son, O’Farrell once again opens up the past like she’s cracking a geode. Suddenly, the undulating fields are sparkling in the moist air, redolent with the incongruous scents of peat and political oppression.
Stomping into a copse to retrieve Liam’s lost boot, Tomás stumbles upon a....
You can read the rest of this review on Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/in-...
June 13, 2026
I had been looking forward to Land (2026) by Maggie O'Farrell for months. Unfortunately, my reading experience can be summarized in one sentence: high hopes gave way to disappointment.
Land is a historical novel set in Ireland in 1865 at the beginning, in the wake of the Great Famine. At the outset, it follows Tomás, a surveyor and mapmaker working for the British Ordnance Survey, as he and his young son Liam map a remote coastal peninsula. From there, the novel gradually evolves into a family saga. I found the first half of the book distinctively better. I thoroughly enjoyed the evocative nature descriptions and the magical elements of Irish folklore woven into the realistic narrative. Magical realism resurfaces at the very end of the novel, though in a rather bizarre way.
The second half of the book feels as if it were written by a different author. Sometimes there is a palpable lack of direction in the plot, as if Maggie O'Farrell was a bit unsure where the story should go. To compensate for this, she introduces a relentless succession of misfortunes and family tragedies. This parade of hardships became insufferable and seemed to lead nowhere, making it feel as though the author cared mostly about giving the reader a repeated emotional jolt.
At a certain point, I noticed that this excess of misery began to numb rather than move me. I caught myself coldly calculating what kind of calamity we could expect next. I felt like a character in a video game, wandering around through a landscape of predetermined disasters and waiting for the next blow to land. Gradually, my sympathy for Tomás and his family gave way to frustration with the author. Don't let the lush, vibrant colours on the cover fool you—they bear little resemblance to the bleak world contained within. I was genuinely surprised that O'Farrell never provided a meaningful counterweight to all this suffering.
It was also vexing that the plausibility of several events felt problematic. Could a poor widow, who owned nothing but a single cow, really afford to take in and feed a family with three children for at least a few weeks? Would Tomás be able to rebuild the ruins of a house on his own, in such a short time? The narrator explicitly notes that the local fisherman's visits during the construction were rather social. Furthermore, the ruins were located on a mountain that required an exhausting trek to reach. Besides, how on earth was dead body identified when it was found several days' walking distance from home? The area seemed entirely uninhabited, and there was no radio, telegraph, newspapers, etc. Just a few examples. On top of that, there are coincidences whose probability strains belief—such as Enda and her grandfather ending up in the exact same restaurant in Canada.
Both Hamnet (which I loved) and The Marriage Portrait (which I quite liked) possessed a deliberate structure. You could tell there was a core vision that O'Farrell executed with ironclad consistency. Here, by contrast, I felt as though I were being led by a tour guide who began the journey with only the vaguest outline of the route and improvised the rest along the way. Ironically, the story of a cartographer and his family seemed to need a better map.
I truly envy the readers who were once again swept under the spell of Maggie O'Farrell's storytelling and fell in love with this book. I didn't, despite my best efforts, although there were aspects that I admired immensely. I adore Ireland and have long been fascinated by its history and culture, so it was a pleasure to read a novel set during a lesser-known period of the country's past. I cannot judge its historical accuracy, but at times, it felt as though the novel was set in the Middle Ages rather than the late 19th century.
Some passages were truly stunning, especially at the beginning, and I appreciated the strong environmental and feminist undercurrents. One of the novel's strengths is its title: it works on multiple levels. I particularly enjoyed the range of meanings it suggests, from the physical landscape to the notion of a Promised Land. The book is also highly cinematic; a film adaptation is likely just a matter of time. All in all, I'm probably the one to blame: had my expectations not been so elevated, Land would have resonated with me more.
Land is a historical novel set in Ireland in 1865 at the beginning, in the wake of the Great Famine. At the outset, it follows Tomás, a surveyor and mapmaker working for the British Ordnance Survey, as he and his young son Liam map a remote coastal peninsula. From there, the novel gradually evolves into a family saga. I found the first half of the book distinctively better. I thoroughly enjoyed the evocative nature descriptions and the magical elements of Irish folklore woven into the realistic narrative. Magical realism resurfaces at the very end of the novel, though in a rather bizarre way.
The second half of the book feels as if it were written by a different author. Sometimes there is a palpable lack of direction in the plot, as if Maggie O'Farrell was a bit unsure where the story should go. To compensate for this, she introduces a relentless succession of misfortunes and family tragedies. This parade of hardships became insufferable and seemed to lead nowhere, making it feel as though the author cared mostly about giving the reader a repeated emotional jolt.
At a certain point, I noticed that this excess of misery began to numb rather than move me. I caught myself coldly calculating what kind of calamity we could expect next. I felt like a character in a video game, wandering around through a landscape of predetermined disasters and waiting for the next blow to land. Gradually, my sympathy for Tomás and his family gave way to frustration with the author. Don't let the lush, vibrant colours on the cover fool you—they bear little resemblance to the bleak world contained within. I was genuinely surprised that O'Farrell never provided a meaningful counterweight to all this suffering.
It was also vexing that the plausibility of several events felt problematic. Could a poor widow, who owned nothing but a single cow, really afford to take in and feed a family with three children for at least a few weeks? Would Tomás be able to rebuild the ruins of a house on his own, in such a short time? The narrator explicitly notes that the local fisherman's visits during the construction were rather social. Furthermore, the ruins were located on a mountain that required an exhausting trek to reach. Besides, how on earth was dead body identified when it was found several days' walking distance from home? The area seemed entirely uninhabited, and there was no radio, telegraph, newspapers, etc. Just a few examples. On top of that, there are coincidences whose probability strains belief—such as Enda and her grandfather ending up in the exact same restaurant in Canada.
Both Hamnet (which I loved) and The Marriage Portrait (which I quite liked) possessed a deliberate structure. You could tell there was a core vision that O'Farrell executed with ironclad consistency. Here, by contrast, I felt as though I were being led by a tour guide who began the journey with only the vaguest outline of the route and improvised the rest along the way. Ironically, the story of a cartographer and his family seemed to need a better map.
I truly envy the readers who were once again swept under the spell of Maggie O'Farrell's storytelling and fell in love with this book. I didn't, despite my best efforts, although there were aspects that I admired immensely. I adore Ireland and have long been fascinated by its history and culture, so it was a pleasure to read a novel set during a lesser-known period of the country's past. I cannot judge its historical accuracy, but at times, it felt as though the novel was set in the Middle Ages rather than the late 19th century.
Some passages were truly stunning, especially at the beginning, and I appreciated the strong environmental and feminist undercurrents. One of the novel's strengths is its title: it works on multiple levels. I particularly enjoyed the range of meanings it suggests, from the physical landscape to the notion of a Promised Land. The book is also highly cinematic; a film adaptation is likely just a matter of time. All in all, I'm probably the one to blame: had my expectations not been so elevated, Land would have resonated with me more.
June 25, 2026
Sometimes a book comes along and sweeps you off your feet in a way you really couldn't have anticipated!!!
There is something about this book that now, having read it, leaves me feeling so nostalgic, full of melancholy and awe and so so in love with what literature can provide us. Following a family in the 1800s who venture on mapping the entirety of Ireland, we see the great hunger, the fragility of love, what it means to pursue a life for ourselves and the sacrifices of it all. This was a masterclass in storytelling and description - Maggie O'Farrell is absolutely one of the best novelists we currently have. Being so rich in historical context as well as showcasing nature as something mythical and everlasting, the book often felt as if it teetered on magical realism (this is so impressive to me as a writer).
Everything that has EVER existed STILL exists!!! will be thinking about this little family forever... I have never need to touch grass more (complimentary)
There is something about this book that now, having read it, leaves me feeling so nostalgic, full of melancholy and awe and so so in love with what literature can provide us. Following a family in the 1800s who venture on mapping the entirety of Ireland, we see the great hunger, the fragility of love, what it means to pursue a life for ourselves and the sacrifices of it all. This was a masterclass in storytelling and description - Maggie O'Farrell is absolutely one of the best novelists we currently have. Being so rich in historical context as well as showcasing nature as something mythical and everlasting, the book often felt as if it teetered on magical realism (this is so impressive to me as a writer).
Everything that has EVER existed STILL exists!!! will be thinking about this little family forever... I have never need to touch grass more (complimentary)
April 18, 2026
A glimpse at Maggie O’Farrell’s creative process in her opening letter to her readers - where she was when first line of this story came to her, a story she knows she’s meant to write, inspired by her great-great-grandfather. From the first sentence to the last this extraordinarily beautiful and complex novel is why Maggie O’Farrell is one of my very favorite writers . It’s a profound, multilayered story telling of events in Ireland’s history depicted through the struggles of a family whose heartaches over the years become our heartaches as we share their fear, loss, grief, their love as they make their way in life.
In 1865 Ireland, a discovery is made as ten year old Liam is working with his father, a land surveyor for the red coats. They find a spring, magical waters perhaps that will forever change the lives of Liam, his father Tomas and their family in the years to come. The recent past is brought forward through Tomas’ memory in some horrific scenes of the Great Hunger, gut wrenching, heartbreaking and unbearable memories of the times of hunger and death when he was a young boy. Later through his wife’s unbearable memories we get a picture of the struggles and loss and suffering of her family. As the years pass, I came to love this whole family. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the kind and wise widow who helps all of them through their struggles and their loyal dog Bran.
O’Farrell’s masterful storytelling weaves together multiple time lines and characters, bridging the folklore magic of ancient times to a time we recognize in the present setting of 1865. The changes in time are seamless. She draws on magical realism and this with the fairytale like stories of a millennia earlier never feel too much. These elements belong here . This is the story of the land, how this family toils to sustain themselves off the land, how Tomas has to reluctantly work for the red coats in order to pay the rent on the land on which they live by naming places and relegating ownership which he knows divides people, a story of the people who lived on this land before them, a story that comes full circle to the land in the future. I’m left in awe.
“A seanchaí is a traditional Gaelic storyteller or historian, serving as an oral repository.” (Wikipedia). O’Farrell is the modern seanchai telling the stories through the written word with beautiful writing . I predict that this will be my favorite book of the year.
I received a copy of this book from Knopf through NetGalley.
In 1865 Ireland, a discovery is made as ten year old Liam is working with his father, a land surveyor for the red coats. They find a spring, magical waters perhaps that will forever change the lives of Liam, his father Tomas and their family in the years to come. The recent past is brought forward through Tomas’ memory in some horrific scenes of the Great Hunger, gut wrenching, heartbreaking and unbearable memories of the times of hunger and death when he was a young boy. Later through his wife’s unbearable memories we get a picture of the struggles and loss and suffering of her family. As the years pass, I came to love this whole family. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the kind and wise widow who helps all of them through their struggles and their loyal dog Bran.
O’Farrell’s masterful storytelling weaves together multiple time lines and characters, bridging the folklore magic of ancient times to a time we recognize in the present setting of 1865. The changes in time are seamless. She draws on magical realism and this with the fairytale like stories of a millennia earlier never feel too much. These elements belong here . This is the story of the land, how this family toils to sustain themselves off the land, how Tomas has to reluctantly work for the red coats in order to pay the rent on the land on which they live by naming places and relegating ownership which he knows divides people, a story of the people who lived on this land before them, a story that comes full circle to the land in the future. I’m left in awe.
“A seanchaí is a traditional Gaelic storyteller or historian, serving as an oral repository.” (Wikipedia). O’Farrell is the modern seanchai telling the stories through the written word with beautiful writing . I predict that this will be my favorite book of the year.
I received a copy of this book from Knopf through NetGalley.
June 21, 2026
Just the name of this title speaks of its expanse. O’Farrell takes us back through history on a journey unlikely to be forgotten.
The story begins mid 1860’s. Tomas, a cartologist, and his son Liam, are out mapping the country for the redcoats. One day, they find a copse in a valley which is distinctly different- magical- and it changes them.
Mid way, we are sent to the land even earlier. Here are the natives. Those who have lived and found these rivers. A young girl, Brith and her dog, roam the area until it is decided by the elders she is to be sacrificed for the gods to look favourably upon the land and replenish it. But this does not happen. Many perish of the Great Hunger.
O’Farrell’s journey and exploration of the land reflects those who deeply respect it and those who colonize and pillage it.
This is also a story of a family. How the land has shaped them into who they become; How it has also destroyed them as a unit.
The magical realism I wasn't sure of, however, O'Farrell does it in a graceful and seamless way.
I'm not sure how I feel about the ending but I do know I remain an adoring fan of O’Farrell’s beatific writing.
4.5⭐️
The story begins mid 1860’s. Tomas, a cartologist, and his son Liam, are out mapping the country for the redcoats. One day, they find a copse in a valley which is distinctly different- magical- and it changes them.
Mid way, we are sent to the land even earlier. Here are the natives. Those who have lived and found these rivers. A young girl, Brith and her dog, roam the area until it is decided by the elders she is to be sacrificed for the gods to look favourably upon the land and replenish it. But this does not happen. Many perish of the Great Hunger.
O’Farrell’s journey and exploration of the land reflects those who deeply respect it and those who colonize and pillage it.
This is also a story of a family. How the land has shaped them into who they become; How it has also destroyed them as a unit.
The magical realism I wasn't sure of, however, O'Farrell does it in a graceful and seamless way.
I'm not sure how I feel about the ending but I do know I remain an adoring fan of O’Farrell’s beatific writing.
4.5⭐️
June 10, 2026
2.5 Stars
As always, Maggie O'Farrell's writing is beautiful. The descriptions of the Irish landscape are vivid and atmospheric and haunting.
I was so excited to get my hands on this book as I love books by this author and was even more excited to learn she was setting this one in Ireland in the aftermath of the Irish Famine.
This started out promising and tells the story of Thomas and his son Liam mapping a peninsula in Ireland using surveying poles and measuring chains for the English. A famine survivor himself, who is dealing with his own ghosts he is glad of the work to put food on the table and the opportunity to record the empty homes and graveyards scared by the famine.
However much I wanted to love this book, I just couldn't connect with the story or the characters and felt it was dense, drawn out and soulless. I think I needed more history or just a good story to keep me rooting for the characters. This type of book I would normally devour in a few nights but this one dragged out for a week and a half. I am not a fan of magic realism and perhaps this is why I didn't love the novel as it has quite a lot of sprinklings of fairy dust.
The family's hardships was relentless and I was glad to part ways with them by the end of the novel.
Not one for my favourite shelf despite ordering a hard copy but perhaps it will find more joy on another readers bookshelf.
As always, Maggie O'Farrell's writing is beautiful. The descriptions of the Irish landscape are vivid and atmospheric and haunting.
I was so excited to get my hands on this book as I love books by this author and was even more excited to learn she was setting this one in Ireland in the aftermath of the Irish Famine.
This started out promising and tells the story of Thomas and his son Liam mapping a peninsula in Ireland using surveying poles and measuring chains for the English. A famine survivor himself, who is dealing with his own ghosts he is glad of the work to put food on the table and the opportunity to record the empty homes and graveyards scared by the famine.
However much I wanted to love this book, I just couldn't connect with the story or the characters and felt it was dense, drawn out and soulless. I think I needed more history or just a good story to keep me rooting for the characters. This type of book I would normally devour in a few nights but this one dragged out for a week and a half. I am not a fan of magic realism and perhaps this is why I didn't love the novel as it has quite a lot of sprinklings of fairy dust.
The family's hardships was relentless and I was glad to part ways with them by the end of the novel.
Not one for my favourite shelf despite ordering a hard copy but perhaps it will find more joy on another readers bookshelf.
March 7, 2026
An epic Irish story that takes you on quite a journey… starts off in 1865 after the years of the Great Hunger… it follows a family in an Irish peninsula… it’s a story of overlapping lives and haunting ghosts and tells the story of how the land remembers.
There are quite a few moments of magical realism but it pertains to the family history and history of the land.
Maggie O’Farrell’s writing is so good at transporting you to a time and place.
I loved all the family members but my goodness… there was tragedy after tragedy and I was just hoping throughout for something good to happen to them.
Regardless of the outcome, I enjoyed the journey.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.
There are quite a few moments of magical realism but it pertains to the family history and history of the land.
Maggie O’Farrell’s writing is so good at transporting you to a time and place.
I loved all the family members but my goodness… there was tragedy after tragedy and I was just hoping throughout for something good to happen to them.
Regardless of the outcome, I enjoyed the journey.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.
February 10, 2026
lol I literally cannot stop crying. Not because this was sad, but because I just….I loved it so much. Review to come when I can get myself together.
Okay I'm back...
I very well may have just read my favorite book of 2026. Reading Land felt like being told a Story with a capital S if that makes any sense. It felt like sitting at Maggie's feet, leaning further and further in the longer this magical epic went. This is so dramatic, but I cried for more than a little bit when this ended. Not because it was necessarily sad, but because it was so beautiful and I loved it so very much.
We open with a father (Tomas) and son (Liam) working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland in 1865. I learned through an introductory note from O'Farrell that her great-great grandfather worked on the early maps of Ireland not long after The Great Hunger, and researching his life was the impetus for this book. Tomas is determined to tell the real story through his maps of what the Red Coats did to his land and his people and not let the colonizer write that history.
Land is a sweeping story, covering the full lives of the parents and children and the land while also going further back and forward, making time feel not linear at all. It read like pure magic. Not just during the times O'Farrell inserts some magical realism, but all of it. Everything about this book feels alive. I knew every character inside and out. I knew the land and the family's house like it was a person. After all, it holds so much, from our buried loves on to our history and future. O'Farrell tells us that earth can be an ending to one story yet a beginning to another. The connections she makes between characters/the 4 parts of this story scratched the same itch for me that Hearts Invisible Furies did. The way the characters, at times, try imitate one another felt so Shakespearean.
Land leaves me with so much to think about. It sent me down a Gaelic Folklore rabbit hole. It left me stunned contemplating the idea of permanence and how it feels when something that is a constant, like the night sky, somehow isn't anymore. It left me considering honor and resistance in a new light and why leaving land might hurt worse than leaving existence entirely. And finally, it reminded me that my dad drew me a map for how to be, and while he isn't physically here anymore, I can still follow that map.
Okay I'm back...
I very well may have just read my favorite book of 2026. Reading Land felt like being told a Story with a capital S if that makes any sense. It felt like sitting at Maggie's feet, leaning further and further in the longer this magical epic went. This is so dramatic, but I cried for more than a little bit when this ended. Not because it was necessarily sad, but because it was so beautiful and I loved it so very much.
We open with a father (Tomas) and son (Liam) working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland in 1865. I learned through an introductory note from O'Farrell that her great-great grandfather worked on the early maps of Ireland not long after The Great Hunger, and researching his life was the impetus for this book. Tomas is determined to tell the real story through his maps of what the Red Coats did to his land and his people and not let the colonizer write that history.
Land is a sweeping story, covering the full lives of the parents and children and the land while also going further back and forward, making time feel not linear at all. It read like pure magic. Not just during the times O'Farrell inserts some magical realism, but all of it. Everything about this book feels alive. I knew every character inside and out. I knew the land and the family's house like it was a person. After all, it holds so much, from our buried loves on to our history and future. O'Farrell tells us that earth can be an ending to one story yet a beginning to another. The connections she makes between characters/the 4 parts of this story scratched the same itch for me that Hearts Invisible Furies did. The way the characters, at times, try imitate one another felt so Shakespearean.
Land leaves me with so much to think about. It sent me down a Gaelic Folklore rabbit hole. It left me stunned contemplating the idea of permanence and how it feels when something that is a constant, like the night sky, somehow isn't anymore. It left me considering honor and resistance in a new light and why leaving land might hurt worse than leaving existence entirely. And finally, it reminded me that my dad drew me a map for how to be, and while he isn't physically here anymore, I can still follow that map.
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June 28, 2026
Land by Maggie O'Farrell unfolds not as a single story but as a long, patient inquiry into what survives.
The novel follows surveyor-cartographer Tomás and his family after a mystical encounter at an ancient well on the windswept western peninsula of Ireland.
If you have read Hamnet or The Marriage Portrait, you'll recognize the way O’Farrell moves the lens, sitting inside one consciousness for a paragraph, then sliding gently across the room to another.
Here, however, she expands the technique across decades and continents.
Lyrical, slow‑burning, and emotionally brutal, it either lands for you or it doesn’t: some will call it a masterpiece and others will find its weight unbearable.
What stays, after the last page, is not exactly the story. It is the peninsula and the sense that some places are older than the people walking on them and will outlast the maps drawn of them.
The land does not offer closure; it offers continuation.
July 7, 2026
My goodness this book was bleak and depressing.
(Yes, I know Ireland’s history is bleak and depressing, I just don’t need to read any more about it in my fiction.)
The overly descriptive prose and slow pacing makes the book feel longer than its 385 pages. The story jumps around a lot between characters and time periods, and the author uses heavy doses of magical realism and coincidence to drive the plot forward.
This is a fine example of tragedy porn. But due to the prose and structure, I didn’t feel emotionally connected to any of the characters. The tragedies that rained down on one family was so overdone it almost became comical. What else could possibly happen to this family? No worries, the author would find something
All these factors made this boring, tedious, and a slog to the finish line. I considered dnf’ing multiple times and should have followed my instincts
(Yes, I know Ireland’s history is bleak and depressing, I just don’t need to read any more about it in my fiction.)
The overly descriptive prose and slow pacing makes the book feel longer than its 385 pages. The story jumps around a lot between characters and time periods, and the author uses heavy doses of magical realism and coincidence to drive the plot forward.
This is a fine example of tragedy porn. But due to the prose and structure, I didn’t feel emotionally connected to any of the characters. The tragedies that rained down on one family was so overdone it almost became comical. What else could possibly happen to this family? No worries, the author would find something
All these factors made this boring, tedious, and a slog to the finish line. I considered dnf’ing multiple times and should have followed my instincts
June 20, 2026
Apparently Maggie O’Farrell’s Land is being dubbed one of the best books of 2026. Well, I have news for you: it isn’t.
And I want to be clear — I didn’t hate it. I didn’t dread picking it up. It’s fine. Perfectly okay. But “fine” and “best of 2026” are two very different things, and the gap between this novel’s reputation and the actual experience of reading it kept nagging at me until I figured out why.
The material is genuinely interesting. It’s 1865, post-Famine Ireland. Tomás is a mapmaker working for the British Army — an Irishman helping the colonizers erase his own country’s history one anglicized place name at a time. His ten year old son Liam is his apprentice. Then Tomás drinks from a hidden spring in an unmapped copse and comes completely undone. He wears a crown of leaves. He denounces his colonial work. He declares he’ll create a secret true map of the land’s ancient history. A priest arrives, ties him to a table, and tortures him with starvation and prayer until he breaks. Liam finishes the army’s maps alone to secure payment and walks his shattered, silent father back to Dublin.
That’s a novel. Those are stakes. That father-son dynamic — Liam terrified, loyal, quietly furious, watching his father get destroyed by the Church while he finishes the very maps his father renounced — is exactly the kind of thing literary fiction exists to explore. When O’Farrell stays inside that tension the book deserves every bit of its praise.
But then she doesn’t trust it.
Take Tomás’s transformation at the spring. It’s the novel’s inciting event, its central mystery. Did the land itself reach up and change him? Is this madness? Is it vision? That ambiguity should be doing enormous work throughout the entire book. Except at a certain point Phina, his wife, asks him gently whether his old melancholy might be returning. His old melancholy. Meaning this isn’t the first time. Meaning the family has navigated this before. O’Farrell probably intended that as a quiet, tender moment of marital intimacy — a wife who knows her husband. What it actually does is accidentally deflate the novel’s entire mythic engine. The sacred spring, the exorcism, the visions, the obsession — and the man’s wife is essentially asking if he needs to lie down for a bit. Either the spring is real and transformative or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways.
And that’s the novel’s fundamental problem in miniature. It wants two contradictory things at once.
Liam is the best example. Here is a character with a genuinely rich internal conflict — a son manipulated into the priesthood by a man who resents his father, slowly losing the faith he was groomed to have, thousands of miles from home in India when he learns Tomás is dead. That is a novel’s worth of material on its own. But O’Farrell gets bored with it. Rather than doing the hard work of dramatizing Liam’s psychology from the inside, she literally replaces him — his sister Enda steals his emigration papers, cuts her hair, dresses as a man, and sails to Canada in his place. Liam gets a few pages in India and an off-stage crisis of faith. Enda gets the adventure. It’s not a bold structural choice. It’s avoidance. O’Farrell took a compelling character with a genuine internal conflict and decided two people could share the role instead of one person having to carry it.
The novel keeps pulling away from what’s working to flash back to Tomás’s childhood in the workhouse, to an ancient girl named Brith sacrificed at the same spring millennia ago, to historical interludes about the Famine, the Vikings, the dissolution of the monasteries. Some of this pays off. The Brith material has real mythic weight. But O’Farrell signals every connection so heavily — the parallels between Brith and the family, the maps as colonialism, the land remembering — that the reader never gets to feel smart. You get told the answer before you’ve asked the question. Father Joseph grooms Liam for the priesthood as revenge against Tomás — and O’Farrell just tells you that, flat out, instead of letting you watch the manipulation and arrive there yourself. That’s the whole disease in one sentence.
Family sagas can work without a single protagonist. But only when the structure itself is the point. Here it reads less like a deliberate formal choice and more like O’Farrell following whoever interested her that week, handing off the burden of the story whenever it gets hard.
The novel has the shape of a major literary achievement — vast scope, mythic resonance, Big Themes about colonialism and land and faith. Critics respond to the shape. But the execution doesn’t match it. Too strange and sprawling to be a satisfying page-turner. Too anxious and explanatory to be genuine formal daring. A book that looks like it’s doing something difficult while actually doing something much safer.
Pick one, and commit.
And I want to be clear — I didn’t hate it. I didn’t dread picking it up. It’s fine. Perfectly okay. But “fine” and “best of 2026” are two very different things, and the gap between this novel’s reputation and the actual experience of reading it kept nagging at me until I figured out why.
The material is genuinely interesting. It’s 1865, post-Famine Ireland. Tomás is a mapmaker working for the British Army — an Irishman helping the colonizers erase his own country’s history one anglicized place name at a time. His ten year old son Liam is his apprentice. Then Tomás drinks from a hidden spring in an unmapped copse and comes completely undone. He wears a crown of leaves. He denounces his colonial work. He declares he’ll create a secret true map of the land’s ancient history. A priest arrives, ties him to a table, and tortures him with starvation and prayer until he breaks. Liam finishes the army’s maps alone to secure payment and walks his shattered, silent father back to Dublin.
That’s a novel. Those are stakes. That father-son dynamic — Liam terrified, loyal, quietly furious, watching his father get destroyed by the Church while he finishes the very maps his father renounced — is exactly the kind of thing literary fiction exists to explore. When O’Farrell stays inside that tension the book deserves every bit of its praise.
But then she doesn’t trust it.
Take Tomás’s transformation at the spring. It’s the novel’s inciting event, its central mystery. Did the land itself reach up and change him? Is this madness? Is it vision? That ambiguity should be doing enormous work throughout the entire book. Except at a certain point Phina, his wife, asks him gently whether his old melancholy might be returning. His old melancholy. Meaning this isn’t the first time. Meaning the family has navigated this before. O’Farrell probably intended that as a quiet, tender moment of marital intimacy — a wife who knows her husband. What it actually does is accidentally deflate the novel’s entire mythic engine. The sacred spring, the exorcism, the visions, the obsession — and the man’s wife is essentially asking if he needs to lie down for a bit. Either the spring is real and transformative or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways.
And that’s the novel’s fundamental problem in miniature. It wants two contradictory things at once.
Liam is the best example. Here is a character with a genuinely rich internal conflict — a son manipulated into the priesthood by a man who resents his father, slowly losing the faith he was groomed to have, thousands of miles from home in India when he learns Tomás is dead. That is a novel’s worth of material on its own. But O’Farrell gets bored with it. Rather than doing the hard work of dramatizing Liam’s psychology from the inside, she literally replaces him — his sister Enda steals his emigration papers, cuts her hair, dresses as a man, and sails to Canada in his place. Liam gets a few pages in India and an off-stage crisis of faith. Enda gets the adventure. It’s not a bold structural choice. It’s avoidance. O’Farrell took a compelling character with a genuine internal conflict and decided two people could share the role instead of one person having to carry it.
The novel keeps pulling away from what’s working to flash back to Tomás’s childhood in the workhouse, to an ancient girl named Brith sacrificed at the same spring millennia ago, to historical interludes about the Famine, the Vikings, the dissolution of the monasteries. Some of this pays off. The Brith material has real mythic weight. But O’Farrell signals every connection so heavily — the parallels between Brith and the family, the maps as colonialism, the land remembering — that the reader never gets to feel smart. You get told the answer before you’ve asked the question. Father Joseph grooms Liam for the priesthood as revenge against Tomás — and O’Farrell just tells you that, flat out, instead of letting you watch the manipulation and arrive there yourself. That’s the whole disease in one sentence.
Family sagas can work without a single protagonist. But only when the structure itself is the point. Here it reads less like a deliberate formal choice and more like O’Farrell following whoever interested her that week, handing off the burden of the story whenever it gets hard.
The novel has the shape of a major literary achievement — vast scope, mythic resonance, Big Themes about colonialism and land and faith. Critics respond to the shape. But the execution doesn’t match it. Too strange and sprawling to be a satisfying page-turner. Too anxious and explanatory to be genuine formal daring. A book that looks like it’s doing something difficult while actually doing something much safer.
Pick one, and commit.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 7, 2026
I am stuck somewhere between 4 and 5!
Full review to come!
The year is 1865, Irish peninsula, post the Great Hunger. Villagers are abandoned, homes are ruined, mass graves everywhere. Tomas and his 10 year old son Liam are surveying these lands and the scars that were left behind. Tomas discovers a copse containing a sacred spring and disappears for days. When he reappears, he is a changed man and abandons his old life as a cartographer. He moves his entire family to this remote place despite the increasing strain. As the novel broadens into a multi-generational family saga, the heart of the story is mainly centered at the ancient story beneath the land.
This was one of my selected picks from BOTM. Let's dive in!
Full review to come!
The year is 1865, Irish peninsula, post the Great Hunger. Villagers are abandoned, homes are ruined, mass graves everywhere. Tomas and his 10 year old son Liam are surveying these lands and the scars that were left behind. Tomas discovers a copse containing a sacred spring and disappears for days. When he reappears, he is a changed man and abandons his old life as a cartographer. He moves his entire family to this remote place despite the increasing strain. As the novel broadens into a multi-generational family saga, the heart of the story is mainly centered at the ancient story beneath the land.
This was one of my selected picks from BOTM. Let's dive in!
June 16, 2026
You know, as I do, that was another day that changed everything.
I had this novel on my hold list at my local library and was surprised to get it so quickly (published June 2nd). Maggie O’Farrell sets up a tale about a mapmaker, Tomás, in 1865 on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. What I like most is how she builds the characters and relationships of Tomas’s family, his wife, and children. They are like separate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that she fits together to create a dynamic landscape of interweaving personalities. We see in particular how Liam’s identity revolves around his struggles with his father. Tomás wants his son to follow in his steps as a mapmaker. Mapmaking was an identity that Tomás fully embodied. It enabled his rise from poverty, and he sees it as powerful. He also sees it as a way to resist British occupiers, the very men for whom he works for the Ordnance Survey project.
I am making my own map. I will never cede to their version of geography, of history, of linguistics and toponomy.
Isn’t this a characteristic that most of us have? The desire to walk our own path, not one that’s pocked with the false narratives of others. To draw our own maps is an act of affirmation. Sometimes we have to walk the path to know what it is, where it leads.
O’Farrell dips from the present of 1865 back into Tomás’s childhood, and carries us along lightly, birds riding on the feathery wings of her writing. Her transitions are so smooth, we fly from one point in time to another. Sometimes her prose is so beautiful, I float in an airy dream, not wanting to move on, but hover over a scene, a hummingbird sipping the bittersweet that locks me into the emotional life of Tomás as a young boy, his dreams, the nature of his creativity, his longings. Tomás doesn’t remember the years of the Great Hunger while he is living at the workhouse, but he is planning with all that is within him to escape. He is an adult when the haunting memories resurface and exact harrowing consequences.
A taciturn man, Tomás is haunted by the ghosts of his past, even before remembering who those ghosts were. His wife also came through the Great Hunger and lost a mother and many siblings, a father who disappeared. They are cut off from their past, from parental love and support, but together they love their children the best that they can. From these lonely parents, O’Farrell fashions a family. She sculpts them all with words. Enda is the firstborn, a year older than Liam. She wishes to be acknowledged as smart and capable as her brother, Liam. Then, there is Rose, a beauty who shadows all her mother’s steps and becomes the keeper of the hearth. Lastly, a baby boy, who seems to soak the land up into his being.
This is a story about how we are molded by families and circumstance, by the land we love and live upon. I thought about how my own experiences with the land shaped me; about how the homes we lived in, and the homes we left behind, had made their mark. My sister and I were much like Enda and Rose, in a time before the internet and too much TV, in love with trees and creeks, dogs, dolls, and playhouses in the woods, always pretending and loving every minute of it. This wonderful book took me to Ireland in 1865 and the years when Tomás’s family was growing up, and it took me back to my past, my own relationship with the land.
This house is a thing both ancient and disjointed, an entity of addition and subtraction, a palimpsest of stone and wood and caulk and mud. Its existence here, on the peninsula, is proof that everything was once something else: nothing goes away.
I had this novel on my hold list at my local library and was surprised to get it so quickly (published June 2nd). Maggie O’Farrell sets up a tale about a mapmaker, Tomás, in 1865 on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. What I like most is how she builds the characters and relationships of Tomas’s family, his wife, and children. They are like separate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that she fits together to create a dynamic landscape of interweaving personalities. We see in particular how Liam’s identity revolves around his struggles with his father. Tomás wants his son to follow in his steps as a mapmaker. Mapmaking was an identity that Tomás fully embodied. It enabled his rise from poverty, and he sees it as powerful. He also sees it as a way to resist British occupiers, the very men for whom he works for the Ordnance Survey project.
I am making my own map. I will never cede to their version of geography, of history, of linguistics and toponomy.
Isn’t this a characteristic that most of us have? The desire to walk our own path, not one that’s pocked with the false narratives of others. To draw our own maps is an act of affirmation. Sometimes we have to walk the path to know what it is, where it leads.
O’Farrell dips from the present of 1865 back into Tomás’s childhood, and carries us along lightly, birds riding on the feathery wings of her writing. Her transitions are so smooth, we fly from one point in time to another. Sometimes her prose is so beautiful, I float in an airy dream, not wanting to move on, but hover over a scene, a hummingbird sipping the bittersweet that locks me into the emotional life of Tomás as a young boy, his dreams, the nature of his creativity, his longings. Tomás doesn’t remember the years of the Great Hunger while he is living at the workhouse, but he is planning with all that is within him to escape. He is an adult when the haunting memories resurface and exact harrowing consequences.
A taciturn man, Tomás is haunted by the ghosts of his past, even before remembering who those ghosts were. His wife also came through the Great Hunger and lost a mother and many siblings, a father who disappeared. They are cut off from their past, from parental love and support, but together they love their children the best that they can. From these lonely parents, O’Farrell fashions a family. She sculpts them all with words. Enda is the firstborn, a year older than Liam. She wishes to be acknowledged as smart and capable as her brother, Liam. Then, there is Rose, a beauty who shadows all her mother’s steps and becomes the keeper of the hearth. Lastly, a baby boy, who seems to soak the land up into his being.
This is a story about how we are molded by families and circumstance, by the land we love and live upon. I thought about how my own experiences with the land shaped me; about how the homes we lived in, and the homes we left behind, had made their mark. My sister and I were much like Enda and Rose, in a time before the internet and too much TV, in love with trees and creeks, dogs, dolls, and playhouses in the woods, always pretending and loving every minute of it. This wonderful book took me to Ireland in 1865 and the years when Tomás’s family was growing up, and it took me back to my past, my own relationship with the land.
This house is a thing both ancient and disjointed, an entity of addition and subtraction, a palimpsest of stone and wood and caulk and mud. Its existence here, on the peninsula, is proof that everything was once something else: nothing goes away.
May 29, 2026
No one writes historical fiction like Maggie O’Farrell. Her prior works, Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, remain my all time favorite works of the genre and the two books I always recommend to fans of historical fiction. After finishing her newest work Land, I'll recommend it as well!
Land is an epic saga that is essentially the story of Ireland. Maggie delves into the Green Isles' rich history and the people who have inhabited the land over the centuries. From the potato famine (the great hunger) and the oppression by the wealthy ruling British class, to colonization and the clash between old beliefs and the emergence of Catholicism, Land covers a bit of everything in Ireland’s long, rich history.
Maggie O’Farrell paints a vivid portrait that in her true form is filled with lyrical prose that's nothing short of breathtakingly beautiful. In my opinion, what makes a good book is one that's not only well written but also unforgettable. Land is one of those captivating journeys that sits with the reader long after finishing it.
Land was my number one most anticipated read of the year and it exceeded all of my expectations! I learned so much while reading Land, so much so that I’ll never think of Ireland the same after finishing.
I listened to the audiobook version which is read by Dane Whyte O’Hara who did a brilliant job bringing this compelling story to life. If you decide to pick this one up, I highly recommend this format.
Land by Maggie O’Farrell will be available on June 2. Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted audiobook!
Land is an epic saga that is essentially the story of Ireland. Maggie delves into the Green Isles' rich history and the people who have inhabited the land over the centuries. From the potato famine (the great hunger) and the oppression by the wealthy ruling British class, to colonization and the clash between old beliefs and the emergence of Catholicism, Land covers a bit of everything in Ireland’s long, rich history.
Maggie O’Farrell paints a vivid portrait that in her true form is filled with lyrical prose that's nothing short of breathtakingly beautiful. In my opinion, what makes a good book is one that's not only well written but also unforgettable. Land is one of those captivating journeys that sits with the reader long after finishing it.
Land was my number one most anticipated read of the year and it exceeded all of my expectations! I learned so much while reading Land, so much so that I’ll never think of Ireland the same after finishing.
I listened to the audiobook version which is read by Dane Whyte O’Hara who did a brilliant job bringing this compelling story to life. If you decide to pick this one up, I highly recommend this format.
Land by Maggie O’Farrell will be available on June 2. Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted audiobook!
June 6, 2026
This book made me tired.
I’ve read Marriage Portrait and Hamnet, wasn’t overly impressed by either one, and Land isn’t much different. SO much vast description, but this doesn’t equate to an easy, edge of my seat read. The prose will go from the past to the present in a single sentence, from a view point of a bird to the sky. And while I appreciate the depth, the characters and the storyline just never connected with me.
I forced myself to trudge (and skim) through it. I did enjoy the immigrant POV, as the entire premise (I think) is about colonization and the centuries of effects it has on individual families. Heartbreaking at times, but still a sludge to get through.
That being said, Maggie o’Farrell is for many people, and that is not me.
I’ve read Marriage Portrait and Hamnet, wasn’t overly impressed by either one, and Land isn’t much different. SO much vast description, but this doesn’t equate to an easy, edge of my seat read. The prose will go from the past to the present in a single sentence, from a view point of a bird to the sky. And while I appreciate the depth, the characters and the storyline just never connected with me.
I forced myself to trudge (and skim) through it. I did enjoy the immigrant POV, as the entire premise (I think) is about colonization and the centuries of effects it has on individual families. Heartbreaking at times, but still a sludge to get through.
That being said, Maggie o’Farrell is for many people, and that is not me.
July 31, 2026
This may well be my favourite book of 2026.
I always find it difficult to review a novel I completely fell in love with, because it's such a different experience from simply liking or disliking a book for specific reasons. It's more of a deep emotional connection you form with the story, and that's exactly what happened here.
I adored this lush, atmospheric and sweeping novel, which tells the story of Ireland through the lives of one unforgettable family. Every character felt fully realised and entirely unique, and I became invested in each of them.
I also love magical realism, so I especially appreciated how Maggie O'Farrell weaves folklore into the story. As one character says, "...myth is fact and fact is myth, and both are embodied in the land itself." The way she blurs the lines between myth and reality—whether through enchanted waters or the loss of faith—feels completely natural and adds another layer of magic to an already extraordinary novel.
What impressed me most was the sheer scope of the story. It spans countries, politics, nature and history, yet never loses sight of the family at its heart. Everything comes together so seamlessly that it creates a truly immersive and unforgettable reading experience.
This is one of those rare books that I know will stay with me for a very long time.
I always find it difficult to review a novel I completely fell in love with, because it's such a different experience from simply liking or disliking a book for specific reasons. It's more of a deep emotional connection you form with the story, and that's exactly what happened here.
I adored this lush, atmospheric and sweeping novel, which tells the story of Ireland through the lives of one unforgettable family. Every character felt fully realised and entirely unique, and I became invested in each of them.
I also love magical realism, so I especially appreciated how Maggie O'Farrell weaves folklore into the story. As one character says, "...myth is fact and fact is myth, and both are embodied in the land itself." The way she blurs the lines between myth and reality—whether through enchanted waters or the loss of faith—feels completely natural and adds another layer of magic to an already extraordinary novel.
What impressed me most was the sheer scope of the story. It spans countries, politics, nature and history, yet never loses sight of the family at its heart. Everything comes together so seamlessly that it creates a truly immersive and unforgettable reading experience.
This is one of those rare books that I know will stay with me for a very long time.
July 21, 2026
4.5
I intermittently read and listened to Maggie O’Farrell’s luminous prose, amazed by the sense of wonder this novel evoked. I was moved by the intergenerational family saga that illuminated the tragedy and trauma of the Great Hunger on its victims and descendants. O’Farrell created characters I cared about deeply. There are so many amazing summaries that I will refrain from adding another to the mix. Land was a satisfying read. Highly recommend.
I intermittently read and listened to Maggie O’Farrell’s luminous prose, amazed by the sense of wonder this novel evoked. I was moved by the intergenerational family saga that illuminated the tragedy and trauma of the Great Hunger on its victims and descendants. O’Farrell created characters I cared about deeply. There are so many amazing summaries that I will refrain from adding another to the mix. Land was a satisfying read. Highly recommend.
August 17, 2026
It's the kind of book you wish you could somehow read again for the first time...
July 1, 2026
Maggie O’Farrell has written a novel that is both a paean and a dirge to a land, a culture and a history. Her lush evocative prose elevates the land to a sentient being that emits emotions of joy, outrage and heartbreak. These elements create a narrative that extols resilience and the world’s natural majesty while excoriating the debilitating effects of colonial rule. This reading experience blends history and realism with a touch of folklore and mystery.
When land and history are involved, maps inevitably become a pivotal instrument that tie the two together. Maps have often been called the eyes of history and are the antennae that chronicle both change and continuity in world events.Maps reflect social values and shifts in power. The drawing and redrawing of borders on a map are a visual record of conquest and territorial control throughout time.
It is not surprising then that O’Farrell has chosen the family of a mapmaker to serve as the focal point that unfolds Ireland’s struggles under British rule.We meet Tomas in 1865. He is a surveyor and cartographer who has been hired by the British to map the terrain in the aftermath of the devastation wrought by the Potato Famine over the past twenty five years. Tomas, along with his ten year old son Liam, trods the land on the west coast of Ireland. The area has been ravaged by British neglect during the famine and towns,villages and cottages have disappeared, a silent elegy to the violence and injustice that has beset the region.Tomas is not well pleased to be employed by the British but realizes that his family must survive. Nevertheless, he silently bristles at the arrogance of the ruling class in excluding abandoned communities and renaming terrain to suit England’s purpose.
One day, Tomas barrels into a thicket in search of one of Liam’s boots. Inside the bushes, he discovers a small pool of water which transforms him from taciturn to wildly verbose. Tomas has become a changed man and informs Liam that everything is now different. He will henceforth craft maps that tell the true story of Ireland . It is not clear how this copse transformed Tomas. Might the copse been merely a spring of water? Or a “ faerie” well? Or a portal for time travel? What is clear is that Tomas’ encounter in the copse diverts the narrative path from strictly historical and sends it careening into past and future realms, introducing snippets of mystery and magic realism as an overlay to the main storyline.
In this way, the novel connects the world as we know it to Celtic legend and folklore. We become immersed in a panorama of Irish history, reaching back to the times when human sacrifice was a palliative to the gods and extending forward into the twentieth century. Embedded in this framework is the story of Irish diaspora augmented by prose that infuses history with the scents, sights and feeling of both oppression and fortitude.
The novel contains an epigraph defining the word seanchai as a custodian of tradition and reciter of ancient lore. This epigraph is a guidepost to remind us that ultimately, LAND is about feeling and emotion more so than facts and linear progression.For me, LAND is an example of oral storytelling.It is a reminder that we are a small part of the natural world and spend our lives attempting to unravel its mysteries.
When land and history are involved, maps inevitably become a pivotal instrument that tie the two together. Maps have often been called the eyes of history and are the antennae that chronicle both change and continuity in world events.Maps reflect social values and shifts in power. The drawing and redrawing of borders on a map are a visual record of conquest and territorial control throughout time.
It is not surprising then that O’Farrell has chosen the family of a mapmaker to serve as the focal point that unfolds Ireland’s struggles under British rule.We meet Tomas in 1865. He is a surveyor and cartographer who has been hired by the British to map the terrain in the aftermath of the devastation wrought by the Potato Famine over the past twenty five years. Tomas, along with his ten year old son Liam, trods the land on the west coast of Ireland. The area has been ravaged by British neglect during the famine and towns,villages and cottages have disappeared, a silent elegy to the violence and injustice that has beset the region.Tomas is not well pleased to be employed by the British but realizes that his family must survive. Nevertheless, he silently bristles at the arrogance of the ruling class in excluding abandoned communities and renaming terrain to suit England’s purpose.
One day, Tomas barrels into a thicket in search of one of Liam’s boots. Inside the bushes, he discovers a small pool of water which transforms him from taciturn to wildly verbose. Tomas has become a changed man and informs Liam that everything is now different. He will henceforth craft maps that tell the true story of Ireland . It is not clear how this copse transformed Tomas. Might the copse been merely a spring of water? Or a “ faerie” well? Or a portal for time travel? What is clear is that Tomas’ encounter in the copse diverts the narrative path from strictly historical and sends it careening into past and future realms, introducing snippets of mystery and magic realism as an overlay to the main storyline.
In this way, the novel connects the world as we know it to Celtic legend and folklore. We become immersed in a panorama of Irish history, reaching back to the times when human sacrifice was a palliative to the gods and extending forward into the twentieth century. Embedded in this framework is the story of Irish diaspora augmented by prose that infuses history with the scents, sights and feeling of both oppression and fortitude.
The novel contains an epigraph defining the word seanchai as a custodian of tradition and reciter of ancient lore. This epigraph is a guidepost to remind us that ultimately, LAND is about feeling and emotion more so than facts and linear progression.For me, LAND is an example of oral storytelling.It is a reminder that we are a small part of the natural world and spend our lives attempting to unravel its mysteries.
June 5, 2026
Honestly this one is probably on me.
I can’t follow this to save my life, I listened to it on audiobook WHILE holding and reading the physical copy. It’s deep, lyrical, character driven. I just keep zoning out.
Again, I know this about myself. I just got so much fomo with all the rave reviews.
I’ll see myself out.
I can’t follow this to save my life, I listened to it on audiobook WHILE holding and reading the physical copy. It’s deep, lyrical, character driven. I just keep zoning out.
Again, I know this about myself. I just got so much fomo with all the rave reviews.
I’ll see myself out.
Read
November 27, 2025I’d been looking forward to Land for months and I had expectations that almost couldn’t be met. I went in expecting the history of the land, and its relationship with memory, nature and myth, to be at the heart of the story. Instead, it felt much more like a sprawling family saga, with the historical and mythological elements sitting more in the background. Moreover, I often felt as though O’Farrell had an intriguing collection of ideas but had not quite found a way to make them cohere, unlike Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait.
I also didn’t find the writing as lyrical or emotionally affecting as in O’Farrell’s other books. I also found the narrator to be quite present, especially at scene shifts, with prevented full immersion into the story. As it was, I kept waiting for the novel I thought I was going to read, and ended up being disappointed.
I also didn’t find the writing as lyrical or emotionally affecting as in O’Farrell’s other books. I also found the narrator to be quite present, especially at scene shifts, with prevented full immersion into the story. As it was, I kept waiting for the novel I thought I was going to read, and ended up being disappointed.
June 10, 2026
2.5⭐️ Having read and loved everything O’Farrell has written up to this point and rushed out to get my copy on release day, it really pains me to say that this was a huge disappointment. Of course it’s beautifully written as you would expect, but that just isn’t enough to make up for how slow and dull this is. For whatever reason I couldn’t really connect with any of the characters which meant that when tragedies occurred, I wasn’t really moved by them. The pacing was so slow that I really had to push hard to keep going with this and if it was anyone other than O’Farrell I would have DNF’d after 100 pages. Clearly I am an outlier here as this has some amazing reviews but sadly this just didn’t engage me at all.
August 7, 2026
Such an emotional read! Exquisite writing and story! Land will stay with me for a long time ..
June 14, 2026
'My point is, my point is, my point is... that there needs to be a map of how this land really is, of how it has always been, of what lies beneath whatever order or disorder others might impose upon it. There must be a way to create such a document. And to do so would be an act of honour. Honour and resistance. The whole matter rests in our hands, do you see?'
Tomás looks at him quizzically, with eyes wide and dark as sea anemones. 'Iť's so clear to me,' he says to the dog, or perhaps his son, 'that I don't know why I never saw it before. This is a country that has attracted wave upon wave of conquerors, those who seek to occupy and enslave, but now I alone see how we can resist. To map is to assume power. We can redraw the very land we walk upon, record it how it is, how it was, how it will be. We will not use their names, their estate lines, their plantation boundaries, their barracks: these shall be erased. The very essence of the land, the soil is exactly-
Shortlisted for the 2026 An Post Irish Book Awards - Eason Novel of The Year
Maggie O’Farrell’s first seven novels saw her win the Costa Book Award (and twice be shortlisted) and pick up a Betty Trask and Somerset Maugham Award (both of which had more than one winner) but she of course came most to fame with her eighth novel “Hamnet” published at the end of March 2020, around a week after the UK entered lockdown and immediately struck a chord with readers around the world with its portrayal of Shakespeare’s wife Agnes and a plague struck Stratford.
Having immediately picked up a Women’s Prize shortlisting it was then a surprise omission for the Booker with the author’s husband William Sutcliffe adding to the controversy with a widely shared Tweet “I can’t really see what more a British writer could do to be in contention for the top literary prize in her own country” – a tweet both I think unwise and which retrospectively looks a little odd in a year the prize (admittedly dominated by American based international debur writers) was won by a similarly immersive narrative novel by a British author (Douglas Stuart’s “Shuggie Bain”).
And it was not like the book suffered: eventual winner of the delayed Women’s Prize (winning over two legends in Hilary Mantel and Bernadine Evaristo), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award (the only major US prize open internationally), the Waterstones Book of the Year, the British Book Award “Nibbie” – and going on to net over 2 million sales and even an Oscar nomination for O’Farrell (and Oscar win for the actress playing Agnes) as well as a Golden Globe and BAFTA.
As an aside the controversy did lead to an unusual nomination for the Guardian Not The Booker Award – which otherwise normally attracted small press books – although the wise judges (of which I was one) decided it was too good for the prize.
Her next novel “The Marriage Plot” was Women’s Prize shortlisted (only beaten by the all conquering “Demon Copperhead”) and this is now her 10th novel.
Set in Ireland (for only the second of her books I think) starting around 1856 and drawing heavily on the history of both her native country and her family – it was explicitly inspired by her great-great-grandfather who worked for the British Ordnance Survey on a revision of the maps of Ireland in the wake of the Great Famine, with the author imagining how it must have been to have in effect been required to work for an occupying/colonial power to effectively record the terrible changes wrought on the human geography by the cataclysmic famine those same powers had allowed to occur.
And it further draws (if I can be permitted a pun) on the waters If the sacred springs and wells which are scattered over Ireland – often co-opted by Celtic Catholicism but dating back to pagan days and water-spirit worship.
Her imagined protagonist is Thomas – a brilliant but taciturn mapmaker who we first meet through the eyes of his young son Liam: the two stumble across a small copse (hidden in a valley and previously not mapped – missed by his predecessors) and within it a pool of water – an encounter with which seems to induce in Thomas a manic verbosity (to the considerable disquiet of first Liam and then his family) and a determination to map his home country as it was before waves of occupation, going right back to the first inhabitants of the Island. A mania which leads to an exorcism and a life long dispute with a neighbouring Priest which resonates across the novel.
From there we follow – at a leisurely pace and with O’Farrell’s Hamnet style present tense and lush language and figurative descriptions (if it has to be said with a more explicit eye on a film adaption – the omniscient narrator can often seem like a film director and the script like screenwriters’s instructions) – the story of Thomas and his family, particularly when he decides to resettle them on the isolated West Coast peninsula where he found the copse and well (and where they are befriended by a widowwho forms a key character).
His wife Phina (including the back story of how the two – both effectively orphaned by the famine) meet in a workhouse, form a bond and are eventually reunited, setting up their own family but always aware of their past of terrible loss (Phina haunted by her memories, Thomas still searching for them but eventually literally haunted by his father).
Liam – who gets pulled towards the church and a Jesuit calling (some interviews abroad as he looks to leave that order form part of the novel’s scaffolding) – as a result of the deliberate attempt of the aforementioned Priest to prise him from paternal influence – to the despair of Thomas who had believed he would carry on his new project.
Enda – his rebellious and spirited daughter – something of a force of nature in their previous City dwelling, now resentful that Liam is the only one permitted an education. Twice in the novel she disguses herself and changes places with Liam – the second time to take some emigration papers to Canada he rejects to join the Jesuits. The twin swap in Hamnet was I think justified by its clear and clever Shakespearean resonance – here even the first time (and Thomas’s inability to spot it) felt almost lazy.
Rose – for a long time the youngest and clingiest but who as the novel progresses and her fellow family members either emigrate or perish is forced to take a more foregrounded role in both family and narrative.
Eugene – the youngest and only one born on the Peninsula, he is non verbal and fey, attuned to feelings of inanimate objects (for example he realises early on a wall resents its moss encrustation) but struggling more with conventional human concepts. In many ways he represents the novel – which is almost entirely denuded of direct speech and similarly untethered to linear time and place, as well as perhaps the shared societal silence around the Famine.
Other key characters are
A buried girl Brith from an ancient (effectively first people) tribe (already at the time of her birth almost the last of that tribe, via her itinerant father); the girl and her ring first being seen in a bravura type historical sweep passage (reminiscent of the technique O’Farrell uses in Hamnet for both the passage of the plague and then the journey of a letter, but here with a historical rather than geographical sweep, anchored in place but very much not in time). As an aside this is the third novel I have read this year to feature a girl from ancient times buried in a bog as a suspected result of a ritual sacrifice (here a fact) – after Katya Balan’s “Our Numbered Bones” and Sheila Armstrong’s “Red Mouth” (the latter of which has huge thematic overlaps with “Land” and is I think a better novel). The ring, later discovered by Eugene, takes on talismanic properties (and ends the novel) – while the buried Brith occasionally enters the narrative to sense the changes on the land.
A giant dog (who does at times feature as a character and in a way more convincing than I might have expected and in keeping with the novel’s blurring of the boundaries between human, birds and beasts, inanimate objects and even the spiritual pre-Christian world – all of whom at times take the attention of the narrative voice).
Girl and dog are historically linked “All that remains of Brith's people, and of her father's people, is a particular breed of dog, found only in these parts, with silver-grey fur and a heart that loves too well, and nobody knows why or where it came from.”
There is a lot to like in the novel – its rich and immersive, it some many heartbreaking moments which could be seen as melodramatic other than that they portrays the aftermath of some terrible actual historical events, it has a series of striking characters (if perhaps not always entirely convincingly portrayed – we are perhaps too often told what protagonists are seeing or thinking) which I think will linger with readers (particularly when we get the inevitable screen characters) and its overall ideas of the way maps are something of a Palimpsest of historical influences on a land is a very strong one.
Some of my criticisms are scattered in my review but perhaps my biggest relates to the book’s message. I have no doubt at all at O’Farrell’s intentions and laudable inclinations – she is a passionate advocate for and protagonist of the empathetic power of fiction, and its reach across time as well as people’s. In interviews for this novel (shortly after the Golder’s Green attacks) she told the BBC “I think all of us need to work hard at trying to teach our children and our children's children about not hating other people for being slightly different from yourself.". However I am not sure she has really achieved that aim here – the British army (known only as “redcoats”), the Catholic church (both Priest and Jesuits), the local Protestant gentry are all presented as almost uniformly evil and with zero interiority or insight. And in a related issue – the novel’s calling back to (her words in a NPR interview” the “very, very earliest people who lived in Ireland” seems to me again well-intentioned but also ill-advised given anti-immigrant events immediately post publication in her native Belfast.
Already speculation is starting as to whether it will break her notable Booker duck - I think a third Women’s Prize nomination is probably a better bet and more appropriate outcome.
At this half-formed thought, Rose's mind pulls aside, like someone veering away from a cliff-edge. She knows that people - thousands of them - died at roadsides, in ditches, in the rubble of their homes, outside churches, wherever they fell, not long before she had been born. Neither of her parents had ever spoken of those times, but she, Liam and Enda were aware that they had no grandparents, no cousins, nobody, and Phina had once told them that Tomás had rescued her from a terrible fate, that hed come for her and taken her away with him, but she wouldn't elaborate. Rose has always been aware of a darkness, a roiling cloud, in her parents, a sense of rupture, a lack of rootedness. She has forever carried, like a heavy bag strapped to her back, the sense that she wasn't able to assuage their losses: she was too small, too ignorant, to aid them, to make up for what they lacked. She didn't know how to ask them about it, how to form those questions, where to begin, what to say. And now it was too late. They were both gone.
June 26, 2026
I have been reading this for 4 days and have only made it 166 pages. Reading this is like chewing glass. It's just so uncomfortably boring, and I'm devastated. It didn't have near the same level of skill as her other books.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Received ARC from Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This is a book I respected more than I enjoyed. Maggie O’Farrell’s writing is beautiful and immersive, with a strong sense of place and thoughtful themes around history, memory, and loss. The land itself feels alive, which is one of the novel’s biggest strengths.
The character development is complex and well done, but emotionally it never quite worked for me. Even with richly drawn characters, I struggled to feel connected to any of them.
This book was hard to get through. The pacing is slow and demanding, and while that suits the reflective tone, it made the reading experience feel like effort rather than engagement.
For me, it was a solid but challenging read that didn’t fully land.
This is a book I respected more than I enjoyed. Maggie O’Farrell’s writing is beautiful and immersive, with a strong sense of place and thoughtful themes around history, memory, and loss. The land itself feels alive, which is one of the novel’s biggest strengths.
The character development is complex and well done, but emotionally it never quite worked for me. Even with richly drawn characters, I struggled to feel connected to any of them.
This book was hard to get through. The pacing is slow and demanding, and while that suits the reflective tone, it made the reading experience feel like effort rather than engagement.
For me, it was a solid but challenging read that didn’t fully land.
January 12, 2026
Immersive and atmospheric, this magnificent novel took me on a journey through time as the fate of one Irish family is woven through the history and geography of the land on which they make their home. In a story that spans from Nordic invaders to English colonization, from the Great Famine to Canadian emigration, from the far-reaches of British empire to the source of a supernatural well, O'Farrell's gorgeous prose and rich descriptions gave me a visceral sense of Ireland's wonders and woes.
June 23, 2026
Its mysticism solves the problem of being too obvious that is present in Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, but the story is less convincing here than in those novels. The book is desperate to find a clear message.
September 3, 2026
3.5-3.75-
This one was a bit trickier to rate. It’s long, somber, and deeply detailed—part folklore, part quiet family saga. It traces the arc of a family across generations, from the parents’ early love to their children growing up, alongside the poignant histories of those who inhabited the land before them. It is heavy with themes of loss, loneliness, and finality. Quite grim and undeniably sad, it left an ache in my chest. Yet, it is so beautifully written that I completely see why so many readers adore this author.
This one was a bit trickier to rate. It’s long, somber, and deeply detailed—part folklore, part quiet family saga. It traces the arc of a family across generations, from the parents’ early love to their children growing up, alongside the poignant histories of those who inhabited the land before them. It is heavy with themes of loss, loneliness, and finality. Quite grim and undeniably sad, it left an ache in my chest. Yet, it is so beautifully written that I completely see why so many readers adore this author.
October 22, 2026
Oh, Maggie O’Farrell! How do you manage to take a piece of history, breathe life into its forgotten souls, weave in a little magic, and leave us wondering how on earth we're supposed to return to our ordinary lives afterward? This woman doesn't simply tell stories; she opens a door to another century and invites us into a world where love, suffering, and the ghosts of the past refuse to remain buried.
Land is an ambitious, deeply moving historical novel that reminds us that the ground beneath our feet has witnessed more heartbreak, injustice, and resilience than any map could ever capture.
Ireland, 1865. The Great Famine has devastated families and scarred a nation. Tomás, a survivor of that terrible period, works alongside his young son, Liam, surveying the Irish landscape for the British authorities. Their job is to measure, name, and record the land, transforming a place steeped in memories, traditions, and generations of human experience into lines on a map. But how do you map a place without acknowledging the people who called it home? How do you measure a landscape while ignoring the lives destroyed by the forces that reshaped it?
THAT, my friends, is where this novel begins to work its magic.
Because the land remembers. Abandoned homes, vanished communities, and stories passed down through generations refuse to disappear simply because someone has decided they no longer matter. Through Tomás, Phina, Liam, Enda, Rose, and the enigmatic Eugene, O’Farrell explores the devastating consequences of displacement, colonial power, and the erasure of identity without losing sight of the individuals caught in history’s merciless machinery.
And what makes this story particularly fascinating is the way Irish folklore and the supernatural intertwine with everyday life. Mysterious encounters and unsettling details lend the narrative an almost otherworldly quality, reminding us that not everything can be measured, explained, or neatly contained within the boundaries of a map. Give me a storyteller who dares to leave a little room for mystery, and I’m already paying attention!
But don't expect a comfortable stroll through the Irish countryside. The suffering is real, the historical wounds run deep, and the injustices are infuriating. Yet amid the devastation, O’Farrell finds tenderness, unexpected kindness, and the stubborn determination to keep living. Sometimes survival itself is an act of defiance, and sometimes the smallest gestures of humanity shine brightest when everything else has fallen apart.
One of the novel's most compelling ideas is that a map can be accurate and still tell a lie. You can mark every road, measure every hill, and record every boundary while completely missing the heart of a place. You can erase a village from an official document, but what happens to the lives that unfolded there? The loves, the losses, the childhood memories, the people whose names history never bothered to preserve?
This is where Land truly lingers in the mind. It asks whose version of history survives, whose voices are silenced, and how much of what we accept as truth depends on who gets to tell the story. And isn't that just as relevant today? We may have more sophisticated ways of recording the world, but we haven't exactly mastered the art of seeing it through someone else's eyes!
O’Farrell's lyrical prose brings the landscape to life, while her exploration of family, memory, and belonging gives the novel its emotional depth. Her characters carry the consequences of the past in ways they cannot always understand, showing how one generation's suffering can shape the next. The narrative is expansive, and its measured pace requires patience; readers looking for a fast-moving historical thriller might occasionally wish for a shortcut. But this is a story that asks you to slow down, absorb its atmosphere, and appreciate the connections gradually taking shape.
Ultimately, Land is about more than a family surviving the aftermath of catastrophe. It is about belonging when your home has been changed beyond recognition, preserving an identity when others attempt to erase it, and discovering what remains when so much has been lost. It is about the stories we inherit and the invisible threads connecting us to those who came before us.
Maggie O’Farrell has created a richly imagined, emotionally resonant novel that confronts history's cruelty without surrendering to despair. There is sorrow here, certainly, but also beauty, wonder, and the enduring possibility of finding something meaningful in damaged ground.
If you love historical fiction that goes beyond dates and events to explore the human lives hidden beneath history's surface, put Land on your reading list. This is a novel that invites you to look beyond the lines on a map and recognize the lives, loves, losses, and legends no map could ever contain.
And when a book makes you look at the ground beneath your feet a little differently, you know you've experienced something special.
Maggie O’Farrell, you magnificent storyteller. The past isn't really past at all, is it? Sometimes it's right there beneath our feet, waiting for someone brave enough to listen.
Land is an ambitious, deeply moving historical novel that reminds us that the ground beneath our feet has witnessed more heartbreak, injustice, and resilience than any map could ever capture.
Ireland, 1865. The Great Famine has devastated families and scarred a nation. Tomás, a survivor of that terrible period, works alongside his young son, Liam, surveying the Irish landscape for the British authorities. Their job is to measure, name, and record the land, transforming a place steeped in memories, traditions, and generations of human experience into lines on a map. But how do you map a place without acknowledging the people who called it home? How do you measure a landscape while ignoring the lives destroyed by the forces that reshaped it?
THAT, my friends, is where this novel begins to work its magic.
Because the land remembers. Abandoned homes, vanished communities, and stories passed down through generations refuse to disappear simply because someone has decided they no longer matter. Through Tomás, Phina, Liam, Enda, Rose, and the enigmatic Eugene, O’Farrell explores the devastating consequences of displacement, colonial power, and the erasure of identity without losing sight of the individuals caught in history’s merciless machinery.
And what makes this story particularly fascinating is the way Irish folklore and the supernatural intertwine with everyday life. Mysterious encounters and unsettling details lend the narrative an almost otherworldly quality, reminding us that not everything can be measured, explained, or neatly contained within the boundaries of a map. Give me a storyteller who dares to leave a little room for mystery, and I’m already paying attention!
But don't expect a comfortable stroll through the Irish countryside. The suffering is real, the historical wounds run deep, and the injustices are infuriating. Yet amid the devastation, O’Farrell finds tenderness, unexpected kindness, and the stubborn determination to keep living. Sometimes survival itself is an act of defiance, and sometimes the smallest gestures of humanity shine brightest when everything else has fallen apart.
One of the novel's most compelling ideas is that a map can be accurate and still tell a lie. You can mark every road, measure every hill, and record every boundary while completely missing the heart of a place. You can erase a village from an official document, but what happens to the lives that unfolded there? The loves, the losses, the childhood memories, the people whose names history never bothered to preserve?
This is where Land truly lingers in the mind. It asks whose version of history survives, whose voices are silenced, and how much of what we accept as truth depends on who gets to tell the story. And isn't that just as relevant today? We may have more sophisticated ways of recording the world, but we haven't exactly mastered the art of seeing it through someone else's eyes!
O’Farrell's lyrical prose brings the landscape to life, while her exploration of family, memory, and belonging gives the novel its emotional depth. Her characters carry the consequences of the past in ways they cannot always understand, showing how one generation's suffering can shape the next. The narrative is expansive, and its measured pace requires patience; readers looking for a fast-moving historical thriller might occasionally wish for a shortcut. But this is a story that asks you to slow down, absorb its atmosphere, and appreciate the connections gradually taking shape.
Ultimately, Land is about more than a family surviving the aftermath of catastrophe. It is about belonging when your home has been changed beyond recognition, preserving an identity when others attempt to erase it, and discovering what remains when so much has been lost. It is about the stories we inherit and the invisible threads connecting us to those who came before us.
Maggie O’Farrell has created a richly imagined, emotionally resonant novel that confronts history's cruelty without surrendering to despair. There is sorrow here, certainly, but also beauty, wonder, and the enduring possibility of finding something meaningful in damaged ground.
If you love historical fiction that goes beyond dates and events to explore the human lives hidden beneath history's surface, put Land on your reading list. This is a novel that invites you to look beyond the lines on a map and recognize the lives, loves, losses, and legends no map could ever contain.
And when a book makes you look at the ground beneath your feet a little differently, you know you've experienced something special.
Maggie O’Farrell, you magnificent storyteller. The past isn't really past at all, is it? Sometimes it's right there beneath our feet, waiting for someone brave enough to listen.
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