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Land
Op een winderig schiereiland werken Tomás en zijn zoon Liam aan een groot project van de Ordnance Survey waarbij heel Ierland in kaart wordt gebracht. Het is 1865, het land werd kort daarvoor nog geteisterd door de Grote Hongersnood. Tomás is vastbesloten om de gevolgen van die ramp op zijn landkaarten aan te geven, maar door een verontrustende gebeurtenis verandert zijn leven en dat van zijn gezin voorgoed.
O’Farrells nieuwe roman is net zo betoverend en veelzijdig als het Ierse landschap, en laat zien dat als het om land en geschiedenis gaat, niets ooit echt verdwijnt.
O’Farrells nieuwe roman is net zo betoverend en veelzijdig als het Ierse landschap, en laat zien dat als het om land en geschiedenis gaat, niets ooit echt verdwijnt.
448 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2026
About the author
Maggie O'Farrell
46 books19.2k 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 830 reviews
June 2, 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 for free 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 for free on Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/in-...
April 19, 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.
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.
Available June 2
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.
Available June 2
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.
June 15, 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 17, 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.
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May 30, 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 14, 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.
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 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 want 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 want 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.
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.
Read
May 11, 20264⭐
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel ‘Land’ was inspired by her great-great-grandfather, who worked on the Ordnance Survey maps in Ireland. It’s set in post-famine Ireland and spotlights a father and son who are working on the map survey. Tomas has been deeply affected by the loss of the Great Hunger and is driven to record it. Liam, his 10-year-old son, suffers the brunt of his father’s quest.
O’Farrell’s vivid and richly described setting brings Ireland alive for readers. I almost felt the mist on my arms and the wind on my back as I was walking over the dew-sprinkled lands alongside the father-son team. You’ll agree that the setting here is almost a character itself. All that we expect from an Irish setting - the woodlands, the lore, the misty forests - it’s all here and so very magical.
I enjoyed O’Farrell’s exploration of trauma, separation, and how the ripple effects of a man’s desperate drive to keep history alive in the face of so much upheaval affected so many.
I was gifted this copy and was under no obligation to provide a review.
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel ‘Land’ was inspired by her great-great-grandfather, who worked on the Ordnance Survey maps in Ireland. It’s set in post-famine Ireland and spotlights a father and son who are working on the map survey. Tomas has been deeply affected by the loss of the Great Hunger and is driven to record it. Liam, his 10-year-old son, suffers the brunt of his father’s quest.
O’Farrell’s vivid and richly described setting brings Ireland alive for readers. I almost felt the mist on my arms and the wind on my back as I was walking over the dew-sprinkled lands alongside the father-son team. You’ll agree that the setting here is almost a character itself. All that we expect from an Irish setting - the woodlands, the lore, the misty forests - it’s all here and so very magical.
I enjoyed O’Farrell’s exploration of trauma, separation, and how the ripple effects of a man’s desperate drive to keep history alive in the face of so much upheaval affected so many.
I was gifted this copy and was under no obligation to provide a review.
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.
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.
January 29, 2026
Many people will come to Land by Maggie O'Farrell because they have recently read or seen Hamnet, and they absolutely should. Maggie O'Farrell is one of my favorite modern authors. I have read nearly everything she's written, so I loved Land. The story begins with Tomas, a man surveying land in Ireland in 1865. You start by meeting his son and learning about the land. From there, however, the story expands to learn more about The Great Hunger, Irish history, folklore and beliefs, as well as the stories of Tomas' childhood and his current family. The story then expands further from there to follow each of his children. This story is beautiful, as all of Maggie O'Farrell's books are. She writes for people who love grammar and what additional layers exquisitely chosen grammar can add to meaning. That being said, some casual readers of Hamnet may find her descriptions long; this book is an epic; do not think otherwise! Many thanks to netgalley and the publishers for this amazing ARC!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
"𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸."
Ireland never comes alive more vibrantly than under the pen of Maggie O'Farrell.
Lush, lyrical, and deeply moving, 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱 paints a vivid and profound portrait of Ireland that transcends time.
Opening in 1865, we find Tomás and his young son Liam at work on the British Ordinance Survey to map a famine-scarred Ireland. When an encounter in a copse alters Tomás, it has ripple effects on all the family members for decades to come. From births to deaths, from conflicts to survival, from across the seas to new worlds, we follow each heartbreak and each journey they take, together and apart.
Split into four parts, the lack of chapter structure isn't my favorite style and made BRing with Anna, who had audio, slightly difficult. Pacing begins slow and meandering, but be patient. Once the story took root, I was wholly engrossed and captivated to the end.
A true modern day seanchaí herself, O'Farrell has an extraordinary gift for storytelling. It's evident in the way she makes the land itself feel like its own character and how she makes the house feel like a living breathing entity, standing the test of time.
Though the Gulielmus family saga largely serves as the focal point and beating heart, between character and land memories alike, glimpses of Ireland are displayed throughout the eras. From the Viking invasions to the British colonization to the Great Hunger and beyond, she bridges millennia of Irish history with small dashes of mysticism and folklore.
𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱 was one of my most anticipated reads of '26, and it did not disappoint. Visceral, unflinching, evocative, and filled with poignancy and resilience, it is unforgettable and lingers long after the last page is turned.
✨️ My deepest gratitude to Alfred A Knopf for my gifted ARC and finished copies!
[Pub Date: 6•2•2026]
Ireland never comes alive more vibrantly than under the pen of Maggie O'Farrell.
Lush, lyrical, and deeply moving, 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱 paints a vivid and profound portrait of Ireland that transcends time.
Opening in 1865, we find Tomás and his young son Liam at work on the British Ordinance Survey to map a famine-scarred Ireland. When an encounter in a copse alters Tomás, it has ripple effects on all the family members for decades to come. From births to deaths, from conflicts to survival, from across the seas to new worlds, we follow each heartbreak and each journey they take, together and apart.
Split into four parts, the lack of chapter structure isn't my favorite style and made BRing with Anna, who had audio, slightly difficult. Pacing begins slow and meandering, but be patient. Once the story took root, I was wholly engrossed and captivated to the end.
A true modern day seanchaí herself, O'Farrell has an extraordinary gift for storytelling. It's evident in the way she makes the land itself feel like its own character and how she makes the house feel like a living breathing entity, standing the test of time.
Though the Gulielmus family saga largely serves as the focal point and beating heart, between character and land memories alike, glimpses of Ireland are displayed throughout the eras. From the Viking invasions to the British colonization to the Great Hunger and beyond, she bridges millennia of Irish history with small dashes of mysticism and folklore.
𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱 was one of my most anticipated reads of '26, and it did not disappoint. Visceral, unflinching, evocative, and filled with poignancy and resilience, it is unforgettable and lingers long after the last page is turned.
✨️ My deepest gratitude to Alfred A Knopf for my gifted ARC and finished copies!
[Pub Date: 6•2•2026]
June 18, 2026
“… the cragged cliffs that fall off into the pounding sea: a geometric shape moving among grand and yielding irregularities. How radiant, how lovely is the land – and yet how empty. It is as if he has passed through a rent into another realm where humans are unknown, where he is the only one, and will have to make the best of it.”
Land is the tenth novel by award-winning, bestselling Irish author, Maggie O’Farrell. The peninsula juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and has been the site of invasion, famine, destructive storms. In 1865, it’s where ten-year-old Liam reluctantly aids his father, Tomas, employed by the redcoats to draft accurate maps. Tomas sends him to investigate a copse of trees that is absent from the current map, but Liam has a frightening experience at the strange circular pool within, emerges crying.
Tomas goes in to find Liam’s lost boot, but is there a long time and comes out radically changed, garrulous instead of his usual taciturn self. What he’s babbling about has Liam anxious regarding the maps Tomas is meant to complete for much-needed payment. But neither of them has any idea of the changes to their futures that are wrought by their visit to the spring, the tobar the locals say is magical.
The local priest steps in to sort Tomas out, and the man who returns to Phina and their daughters in Dublin, with a smaller purse from the redcoats than expected, at first takes to his bed and refuses to work for the redcoats. Phina’s mending work won’t keep them fed or their rent paid, but soon, Tomas has an alarming plan for his family.
In their thatched cottage on the peninsula, eldest daughter, Enda misses her leading position in their Dublin street, but eventually finds solace in the fiddle their neighbour gives her; Phina can see that Tomas’s intentions to pass mapping skills on to Liam are falling on infertile ground; Rosie transfers her devotion from Phina to Bran, the enormous wolfhound who adopts them; baby Eugene watches, learns, absorbs, but never speaks; and Liam breaks his family’s hearts by becoming a Jesuit missionary.
As O’Farrell traces the paths of those who have lived on the peninsula, who have been affected by the spring, sometimes in small vignettes, sometimes more elaborately, she also explores the power of the clergy, and the connection to the land reminiscent of the Australian natives bond to country. Love, grief, poor choices, chance encounters and near misses, departures and arrivals, all feature in this wonderful work of historical fiction.
Throughout, O’Farrell treats the reader to exquisite descriptive prose: “A skein of marsh birds passes over his head, their cries a dissonant plucking on untuned instruments”, “… as if she is being scorched by the focused, inescapable beam of Rose’s fury all the way from the peninsula” and “Was it then that Liam felt his faith loosening in its foundation, like an unsound tooth?” are examples.
Also: “By the end of the following day, the cottage has acquired a thick lid of thatch, the straw-ends trimmed and shaped to a massed curve, the gables snugly covered. The rain slicks off it and the wind skims over it, as if the elements are surprised by this development and wish to test its properties.” Maggie O’Farrell always delivers.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Hachette Australia.
Land is the tenth novel by award-winning, bestselling Irish author, Maggie O’Farrell. The peninsula juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and has been the site of invasion, famine, destructive storms. In 1865, it’s where ten-year-old Liam reluctantly aids his father, Tomas, employed by the redcoats to draft accurate maps. Tomas sends him to investigate a copse of trees that is absent from the current map, but Liam has a frightening experience at the strange circular pool within, emerges crying.
Tomas goes in to find Liam’s lost boot, but is there a long time and comes out radically changed, garrulous instead of his usual taciturn self. What he’s babbling about has Liam anxious regarding the maps Tomas is meant to complete for much-needed payment. But neither of them has any idea of the changes to their futures that are wrought by their visit to the spring, the tobar the locals say is magical.
The local priest steps in to sort Tomas out, and the man who returns to Phina and their daughters in Dublin, with a smaller purse from the redcoats than expected, at first takes to his bed and refuses to work for the redcoats. Phina’s mending work won’t keep them fed or their rent paid, but soon, Tomas has an alarming plan for his family.
In their thatched cottage on the peninsula, eldest daughter, Enda misses her leading position in their Dublin street, but eventually finds solace in the fiddle their neighbour gives her; Phina can see that Tomas’s intentions to pass mapping skills on to Liam are falling on infertile ground; Rosie transfers her devotion from Phina to Bran, the enormous wolfhound who adopts them; baby Eugene watches, learns, absorbs, but never speaks; and Liam breaks his family’s hearts by becoming a Jesuit missionary.
As O’Farrell traces the paths of those who have lived on the peninsula, who have been affected by the spring, sometimes in small vignettes, sometimes more elaborately, she also explores the power of the clergy, and the connection to the land reminiscent of the Australian natives bond to country. Love, grief, poor choices, chance encounters and near misses, departures and arrivals, all feature in this wonderful work of historical fiction.
Throughout, O’Farrell treats the reader to exquisite descriptive prose: “A skein of marsh birds passes over his head, their cries a dissonant plucking on untuned instruments”, “… as if she is being scorched by the focused, inescapable beam of Rose’s fury all the way from the peninsula” and “Was it then that Liam felt his faith loosening in its foundation, like an unsound tooth?” are examples.
Also: “By the end of the following day, the cottage has acquired a thick lid of thatch, the straw-ends trimmed and shaped to a massed curve, the gables snugly covered. The rain slicks off it and the wind skims over it, as if the elements are surprised by this development and wish to test its properties.” Maggie O’Farrell always delivers.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Hachette Australia.
June 8, 2026
4.5 stars. Loved it.
June 16, 2026
** June 2026 BOTM Add-On **
3.5 stars
This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2026. I'm probably an outlier here with my rating. For some reason, I didn't connect with this one as much as I did with Hamnet. There were a lot of aspects that I really enjoyed such as the story itself felt like something new and refreshing. I just wish that it was more engrossing for me.
3.5 stars
This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2026. I'm probably an outlier here with my rating. For some reason, I didn't connect with this one as much as I did with Hamnet. There were a lot of aspects that I really enjoyed such as the story itself felt like something new and refreshing. I just wish that it was more engrossing for me.
Want to Read
December 21, 2025I Want to Read This: It is By Maggie O’Farrell! 💖💖💖
I love her writing. This story sounds so close to her heart.
Release Date is: June 2, 2026
I love her writing. This story sounds so close to her heart.
Release Date is: June 2, 2026
Read
June 7, 2026Uma grande obra. Mas tenho de, sem dúvida, reler quando a tradução portuguesa for publicada! Sinto que perdi muito do romance.
Depois farei uma review mais completa.
Depois farei uma review mais completa.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Land comença als anys 60s del segle xix (uns anys després de la gran fam) i explica la història (tràgica, diria jo) d'una família irlandesa. El pare es dedica a fer mapes per l'exèrcit britànic fins que un dia passa una cosa (una mica màgica) i decideix traslladar tota la familia (dona, dues filles i dos fills) de Dublín al sud-oest de la illa, a un poble remot i solitari.
Land, a la vegada, crec que intenta ser la història d'Irlanda com a terra, territorri ocupat, país i nació. Però és sobretot la història d'aquesta família i els seus infortunis, que sens dubte van lligats a la terra d'on vénen.
He de dir que em vaig avorrir una mica a la primera part, i que a partir de la segona tot agafa un altre ritme. Però no passa res per avorrir-se, el meu problema principal amb el llibre ha sigut que, tot i utilitzar un dels meus tipus de narradors preferits (l'omniscient que es permet passar d'un personatge a l'altra de manera simultània per molt que estiguin a diferents llocs del món, el narrador que sap què passa amb el vent, els arbres, l'aire, que sap i entén el passat i el futur del que narra), no he pogut evitar notar una certa artificialitat en aquest recurs, com també en l'ús d'un realisme màgic en el que no hi he entrat gens.
També he de dir que hi ha unes 30 pàgines on l'autora va molt lluny en el temps, i si haguéssin seguit moltes més, potser l'hagués deixat, perquè per mi no funcionen i aporten poc a la història.
No em trec la sensació de que hi ha alguna cosa forçada en la novel·la.
Land, a la vegada, crec que intenta ser la història d'Irlanda com a terra, territorri ocupat, país i nació. Però és sobretot la història d'aquesta família i els seus infortunis, que sens dubte van lligats a la terra d'on vénen.
He de dir que em vaig avorrir una mica a la primera part, i que a partir de la segona tot agafa un altre ritme. Però no passa res per avorrir-se, el meu problema principal amb el llibre ha sigut que, tot i utilitzar un dels meus tipus de narradors preferits (l'omniscient que es permet passar d'un personatge a l'altra de manera simultània per molt que estiguin a diferents llocs del món, el narrador que sap què passa amb el vent, els arbres, l'aire, que sap i entén el passat i el futur del que narra), no he pogut evitar notar una certa artificialitat en aquest recurs, com també en l'ús d'un realisme màgic en el que no hi he entrat gens.
També he de dir que hi ha unes 30 pàgines on l'autora va molt lluny en el temps, i si haguéssin seguit moltes més, potser l'hagués deixat, perquè per mi no funcionen i aporten poc a la història.
No em trec la sensació de que hi ha alguna cosa forçada en la novel·la.
June 2, 2026
There is a moment near the start of the new novel where a ten-year-old boy stands on a windswept hillock holding a surveying chain in hands gone scarlet from cold, while his father waves at him from the other end of a measuring line. Liam can barely make out his father in the wet Atlantic mist. That image of a small child and a stubborn adult, separated by chain and weather and several centuries of grief, more or less tells you what Land by Maggie O'Farrell is going to do to you over the next four hundred pages.
A country still in mourning
The year is 1865. The Great Hunger is recent enough that the bones are still settling in the ditches and that everyone over the age of twenty has lost someone. Tomás, the map-maker, has been sent by the British Ordnance Survey to record a peninsula on the westernmost tip of Ireland. His task is technical, but his motive is private. He wants the maps to bear witness. And he wants the names of the dead villages, the unworked fields, the workhouse roads that lead nowhere, set down in ink so the ruin cannot be politely forgotten by Dublin or by London.
He has brought his reluctant son Liam, aged ten, as a chain-bearer. His wife Phina, his daughters Enda and Rose, and a watchful baby called Eugene wait at a cottage rented from the local viscount's factor. There is a loyal dog called Bran. There is a widow with a spinning wheel who knows every cabin that emptied in the wintering. None of this should be unusual ground for the author of Hamnet, but what she does with it here is.
The hidden copse and the rule Tomás will not follow
The central engine of the book is a small one. Tomás goes looking for his son's lost boot and instead finds a copse so old and so concealed that the previous sappers missed it altogether. Inside is a spring, a pool with mineral-green water, oak trunks no two men could span. He drinks from the source. Something in him moves and does not move back.
The question that follows him for the rest of the novel is, in his own words, whether the place should exist on the map or on the land. He knows that to record it is to condemn it: the viscount will have the trees felled within a week of the chart reaching the office. He also knows that not to record it goes against everything an Ordnance Survey assistant is paid to do. The novel never lets him resolve that argument easily.
The lives that overlap with his
What makes Land by Maggie O'Farrell more than a quiet meditation on cartography is how widely she opens out from this single hesitation. She slips back to a girl called Brith, who walked the same hillside thousands of years earlier with a hound at her side and a ring in her possession. She slips forward to a Liam who has crossed an ocean and is being judged by a panel of robed men in a country far from home. And she gives Phina a fierce inner life, makes Enda the fastest mind in the family, lets Rose and Eugene each carry a separate kind of silence.
The dog Bran gets his own consciousness, and rather than feeling twee, those passages read as the most uncomplicated love in the book. He sleeps near a swaddled baby and decides, on the spot, that this is his post in the world.
A prose that listens to the ground
O'Farrell has always written from inside the body. Here she writes from inside the place. The prose pays attention to the way moss creeps over a stone, the way a stream slips underground and reappears, the cold edge of a Gaelic word against an English one. She uses two languages with the kind of grace that does not call attention to itself. Anyone who has loved her sentence-level work in The Marriage Portrait or Instructions for a Heatwave will find the same restrained, sensory care here, only applied to soil instead of skin.
There are also Report Of Progress sections written in a deadpan civil-service voice, with the inner truth of what Tomás is actually doing tucked into parentheses underneath. That formal trick gives the book some of its best small comedy and most of its quiet heartbreak.
What the novel does brilliantly
The Ordnance Survey premise feels both meticulously researched and lightly worn. You learn how a theodolite is levelled without ever feeling lectured at.
Childhood is rendered with rare honesty. Liam at ten, Enda at almost twelve, Eugene as a watching infant, each gets the full weight of an internal weather system.
The peninsula itself is given the attention usually reserved for a person. The cliffs, the cove, the boreens, the bog, all feel surveyed by someone who has stood there with wet feet.
The grief sits in the right places. The famine is never sensationalised. It works the way real grief works, in absences rather than in scenes.
Where the book asks patience of you
Land by Maggie O'Farrell is not built for readers in a hurry. The prehistoric strand with Brith and her hound is haunting on its own terms but takes a while to align with the 1865 storyline, and some readers will lose patience before that pay-off arrives. The middle third, set on a remote island where the family fractures further, slows the forward push considerably. A few of the time-jumps, especially the late Dublin sections, feel as if they belong in their own short novel rather than tucked into the close of this one.
There is also the question of register. The book is written in a serious key throughout. Compared with the springy momentum of This Must Be the Place or even the cracked-open energy of Hamnet, this novel sometimes reads as a more solemn cousin. That suits its subject, but readers who came to O'Farrell for her dry domestic wit may miss it.
None of this undoes the book. It does, fairly, explain why the average reader response sits a notch below adoration.
Final word
The dedication thanks her great-great-grandfather, with the Irish blessing for eternal peace. By the end of the book, you understand why. Land by Maggie O'Farrell is a book about the work of remembering done on behalf of people who were not given the chance to remember themselves. It does not all land, and it asks something of you in the reading. The pages that do land are worth the asking.
A country still in mourning
The year is 1865. The Great Hunger is recent enough that the bones are still settling in the ditches and that everyone over the age of twenty has lost someone. Tomás, the map-maker, has been sent by the British Ordnance Survey to record a peninsula on the westernmost tip of Ireland. His task is technical, but his motive is private. He wants the maps to bear witness. And he wants the names of the dead villages, the unworked fields, the workhouse roads that lead nowhere, set down in ink so the ruin cannot be politely forgotten by Dublin or by London.
He has brought his reluctant son Liam, aged ten, as a chain-bearer. His wife Phina, his daughters Enda and Rose, and a watchful baby called Eugene wait at a cottage rented from the local viscount's factor. There is a loyal dog called Bran. There is a widow with a spinning wheel who knows every cabin that emptied in the wintering. None of this should be unusual ground for the author of Hamnet, but what she does with it here is.
The hidden copse and the rule Tomás will not follow
The central engine of the book is a small one. Tomás goes looking for his son's lost boot and instead finds a copse so old and so concealed that the previous sappers missed it altogether. Inside is a spring, a pool with mineral-green water, oak trunks no two men could span. He drinks from the source. Something in him moves and does not move back.
The question that follows him for the rest of the novel is, in his own words, whether the place should exist on the map or on the land. He knows that to record it is to condemn it: the viscount will have the trees felled within a week of the chart reaching the office. He also knows that not to record it goes against everything an Ordnance Survey assistant is paid to do. The novel never lets him resolve that argument easily.
The lives that overlap with his
What makes Land by Maggie O'Farrell more than a quiet meditation on cartography is how widely she opens out from this single hesitation. She slips back to a girl called Brith, who walked the same hillside thousands of years earlier with a hound at her side and a ring in her possession. She slips forward to a Liam who has crossed an ocean and is being judged by a panel of robed men in a country far from home. And she gives Phina a fierce inner life, makes Enda the fastest mind in the family, lets Rose and Eugene each carry a separate kind of silence.
The dog Bran gets his own consciousness, and rather than feeling twee, those passages read as the most uncomplicated love in the book. He sleeps near a swaddled baby and decides, on the spot, that this is his post in the world.
A prose that listens to the ground
O'Farrell has always written from inside the body. Here she writes from inside the place. The prose pays attention to the way moss creeps over a stone, the way a stream slips underground and reappears, the cold edge of a Gaelic word against an English one. She uses two languages with the kind of grace that does not call attention to itself. Anyone who has loved her sentence-level work in The Marriage Portrait or Instructions for a Heatwave will find the same restrained, sensory care here, only applied to soil instead of skin.
There are also Report Of Progress sections written in a deadpan civil-service voice, with the inner truth of what Tomás is actually doing tucked into parentheses underneath. That formal trick gives the book some of its best small comedy and most of its quiet heartbreak.
What the novel does brilliantly
The Ordnance Survey premise feels both meticulously researched and lightly worn. You learn how a theodolite is levelled without ever feeling lectured at.
Childhood is rendered with rare honesty. Liam at ten, Enda at almost twelve, Eugene as a watching infant, each gets the full weight of an internal weather system.
The peninsula itself is given the attention usually reserved for a person. The cliffs, the cove, the boreens, the bog, all feel surveyed by someone who has stood there with wet feet.
The grief sits in the right places. The famine is never sensationalised. It works the way real grief works, in absences rather than in scenes.
Where the book asks patience of you
Land by Maggie O'Farrell is not built for readers in a hurry. The prehistoric strand with Brith and her hound is haunting on its own terms but takes a while to align with the 1865 storyline, and some readers will lose patience before that pay-off arrives. The middle third, set on a remote island where the family fractures further, slows the forward push considerably. A few of the time-jumps, especially the late Dublin sections, feel as if they belong in their own short novel rather than tucked into the close of this one.
There is also the question of register. The book is written in a serious key throughout. Compared with the springy momentum of This Must Be the Place or even the cracked-open energy of Hamnet, this novel sometimes reads as a more solemn cousin. That suits its subject, but readers who came to O'Farrell for her dry domestic wit may miss it.
None of this undoes the book. It does, fairly, explain why the average reader response sits a notch below adoration.
Final word
The dedication thanks her great-great-grandfather, with the Irish blessing for eternal peace. By the end of the book, you understand why. Land by Maggie O'Farrell is a book about the work of remembering done on behalf of people who were not given the chance to remember themselves. It does not all land, and it asks something of you in the reading. The pages that do land are worth the asking.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4.5 stars
Tomas and his young son Liam are surveying their homeland in Ireland for the 1865 British Ordnance map project when they have an ineffable, life-altering experience in a grove of trees. When they return to their family in town, their lives are changed—toward each other as a family, within society, and forever in connection to the land and its layers of history.
At once both sweeping and intimate, O’Farrell layers in multiple, novel points of view as though we’re zooming in and out on a map of this family, seeing through the lens of different family members, the dog Bran, the neighbor midwife, the British surveying team, even a baby in utero.
Literary fiction with lyrical prose. Recommended for you if you liked/loved Hamnet, if you enjoy sweeping family sagas with a dash of the mystical, if you are patient with pacing in order to build to the overall payoff of a beautiful story. Layered with themes/strands of mystery, folklore, connection, faith and reason, generational legacies, colonization, the mystical and the concrete tasks of survival.
"The two share the same dream: a landscape weighed down from above with great billowing clouds that part and merge, letting in the light and obscuring it, over and over again." (218)
"He thinks about what she said about wanting to go travel beyond the edges of maps, to find what was there and he recognizes in that moment that she has gone beyond the limits of parental reach, far beyond, that she will never again reside within it." (223)
Tomas and his young son Liam are surveying their homeland in Ireland for the 1865 British Ordnance map project when they have an ineffable, life-altering experience in a grove of trees. When they return to their family in town, their lives are changed—toward each other as a family, within society, and forever in connection to the land and its layers of history.
At once both sweeping and intimate, O’Farrell layers in multiple, novel points of view as though we’re zooming in and out on a map of this family, seeing through the lens of different family members, the dog Bran, the neighbor midwife, the British surveying team, even a baby in utero.
Literary fiction with lyrical prose. Recommended for you if you liked/loved Hamnet, if you enjoy sweeping family sagas with a dash of the mystical, if you are patient with pacing in order to build to the overall payoff of a beautiful story. Layered with themes/strands of mystery, folklore, connection, faith and reason, generational legacies, colonization, the mystical and the concrete tasks of survival.
"The two share the same dream: a landscape weighed down from above with great billowing clouds that part and merge, letting in the light and obscuring it, over and over again." (218)
"He thinks about what she said about wanting to go travel beyond the edges of maps, to find what was there and he recognizes in that moment that she has gone beyond the limits of parental reach, far beyond, that she will never again reside within it." (223)
Want to Read
December 1, 2025saw a quote about maps so ofc i'll be reading this
June 18, 2026
It’s hard to not be a bit hyperbolic sometimes when you truly loved a book, but after finishing this I feel like I’ve been changed by it.
I have adored every Maggie O’Farrell book I’ve come across, and fiction that spans decades is my favourite, so it's perhaps unsurprising that I'd enjoy it. However, I didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much (so much, in fact that I text my sister and boyfriend halfway through to say that I thought it might be the best book I’d ever read)
I’m terrible at describing books (just ask my book clubs!) but Land defies description, really - it is a sweeping, stunning novel about grief, family, love, loyalty, and faith. It’s about how we are all products of our history and the people who love us, how the landscape can shape you, and how the world may change but the nature of people never really does.
I started reading this book on my lunch hour at work (yes, I’m that person reading in the office kitchen and ignoring everyone), but it was a book that demanded my full attention and I’m glad that I finished the last half at home, with no one to see me crying and exclaiming out loud.
There are scenes and descriptions from the book that I feel will sit with me forever - Brith, the description of one character’s loss of faith, the family through the eyes of Eugene, the ship, and the widow’s help. It’s a book I can’t wait to discuss with friends when they’ve read it. It’s a book that has still left me feeling stunned by how it so carefully and artfully draws its many narrative threads together.
I think Maggie O’Farrell is one of the greatest writers alive today and I will be shocked if this is not my favourite book of 2026.
I have adored every Maggie O’Farrell book I’ve come across, and fiction that spans decades is my favourite, so it's perhaps unsurprising that I'd enjoy it. However, I didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much (so much, in fact that I text my sister and boyfriend halfway through to say that I thought it might be the best book I’d ever read)
I’m terrible at describing books (just ask my book clubs!) but Land defies description, really - it is a sweeping, stunning novel about grief, family, love, loyalty, and faith. It’s about how we are all products of our history and the people who love us, how the landscape can shape you, and how the world may change but the nature of people never really does.
I started reading this book on my lunch hour at work (yes, I’m that person reading in the office kitchen and ignoring everyone), but it was a book that demanded my full attention and I’m glad that I finished the last half at home, with no one to see me crying and exclaiming out loud.
There are scenes and descriptions from the book that I feel will sit with me forever - Brith, the description of one character’s loss of faith, the family through the eyes of Eugene, the ship, and the widow’s help. It’s a book I can’t wait to discuss with friends when they’ve read it. It’s a book that has still left me feeling stunned by how it so carefully and artfully draws its many narrative threads together.
I think Maggie O’Farrell is one of the greatest writers alive today and I will be shocked if this is not my favourite book of 2026.
June 15, 2026
I know this is my own fault, because I was up to high doh with expectations. When I read Hamnet I wasn't long back from Stratford-upon-Avon and the intimacy I felt with the setting heightened the interiority. Similar with The Wedding Portrait and Ferrara. The post famine West of Ireland setting in Land should have been a foregone conclusion for me.
Why am I unmoved?
This is a good story, and the details feel authentic. Is this a departure from the author's usual style or I have jinxed it for myself?Perhaps there is nothing that the author can tell me about this period that I don't already have stamped on my DNA. What was I waiting to feel? Whatever it was, it didn't happen.
With a clean sweep of 5 star reviews my disappointment shouldn't influence anyone from reading this, but I'm dying to know if anyone else felt the same.
This goes some way towards explaining my lack of connection with this book
Maggie O'Farrell flattens 19th century Ireland into a theme-pub cliché in her new novel https://share.google/yMe2KwCWIg6eDyYKv
Why am I unmoved?
This is a good story, and the details feel authentic. Is this a departure from the author's usual style or I have jinxed it for myself?Perhaps there is nothing that the author can tell me about this period that I don't already have stamped on my DNA. What was I waiting to feel? Whatever it was, it didn't happen.
With a clean sweep of 5 star reviews my disappointment shouldn't influence anyone from reading this, but I'm dying to know if anyone else felt the same.
This goes some way towards explaining my lack of connection with this book
Maggie O'Farrell flattens 19th century Ireland into a theme-pub cliché in her new novel https://share.google/yMe2KwCWIg6eDyYKv
May 15, 2026
50th book of the year! I’m so sad because I absolutely love Maggie O’Farrell and consider her one of my favorite authors, but I didn’t quite connect with this novel as I’d hoped.
The pace was extremely slow with many beautiful but lengthy descriptions, and I had trouble getting engaged enough to be excited to pick up this book in my spare time. The lack of dialogue also made me feel like I didn't understand the dynamics of the characters as well as I wish I had, and the early inciting, mysterious incident that changed the entire family's lives was never explained further or in more detail, which I found frustrating. I appreciated the scale of this work and especially Part Two and Brith's story tying into the overall plot; it reminded me of North Woods a bit, which I found challenging but ended up loving.
I seriously considered DNFing at 40%, but decided to skim the book because of my love for O'Farrell's previous works. The second half was definitely more engaging with more happening and less interiority. While I thought there were some beautiful moments like , I also understand some readers' frustrations with the later plot twists, particularly
Overall, this was a book where I admired the quality of the writing moreso than I enjoyed the reading experience.
The pace was extremely slow with many beautiful but lengthy descriptions, and I had trouble getting engaged enough to be excited to pick up this book in my spare time. The lack of dialogue also made me feel like I didn't understand the dynamics of the characters as well as I wish I had, and the early inciting, mysterious incident that changed the entire family's lives was never explained further or in more detail, which I found frustrating. I appreciated the scale of this work and especially Part Two and Brith's story tying into the overall plot; it reminded me of North Woods a bit, which I found challenging but ended up loving.
I seriously considered DNFing at 40%, but decided to skim the book because of my love for O'Farrell's previous works. The second half was definitely more engaging with more happening and less interiority. While I thought there were some beautiful moments like , I also understand some readers' frustrations with the later plot twists, particularly
Overall, this was a book where I admired the quality of the writing moreso than I enjoyed the reading experience.
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