Grace

by Paul Lynch

A sweeping, Dickensian story of a young girl on a life-changing journey across nineteenth-century Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine

Early one October morning, Grace's mother snatches her from sleep and brutally cuts off her hair, declaring, "You are the strong one now." With winter close at hand and Ireland already suffering, Grace is no longer safe at home. And so her mother outfits her in men's clothing and casts her out. When her younger brother Colly follows after her, the two set off on a remarkable odyssey in the looming shadow of their country's darkest hour.

The broken land they pass through reveals untold suffering as well as unexpected beauty. To survive, Grace must become a boy, a bandit, a penitent and, finally, a woman-all the while afflicted by inner voices that arise out of what she has seen and what she has lost.

Told in bold and lyrical language by an author who has already been called "one of his generation's very finest novelists" (Ron Rash, author of The Risen), Grace is an epic coming-of-age novel and a poetic evocation of the Irish famine as it has never been written.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Historical, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction

371 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 11, 2017

About the author

Paul Lynch is the internationally-acclaimed, prize-winning author of five novels: PROPHET SONG, BEYOND THE SEA, GRACE, THE BLACK SNOW and RED SKY IN MORNING, and the winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2018, among other prizes.

His debut novel RED SKY IN MORNING was published to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic in 2013. It was a finalist for France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize) and was nominated for the Prix du Premier Roman (First Novel Prize). In the US, it was an Amazon.com Book of the Month and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, where Lynch was hailed as “a lapidary young master”. It was a book of the year in The Irish Times, The Toronto Star, the Irish Independent and the Sunday Business Post.

THE BLACK SNOW (2014) was an Amazon.com Book of the Month. In France it won the French booksellers’ prize Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel and the inaugural Prix des Lecteurs Privat. It was nominated for the Prix Femina and the Prix du Roman Fnac (Fnac Novel Prize). It was hailed as “masterful” by The Sunday Times, “fierce and stunning” by The Toronto Star and featured on NPR’s All Things Considered where Alan Cheuse said that Lynch’s writing was found “somewhere between that of Nobel poet Seamus Heaney and Cormac McCarthy”.

GRACE was published in 2017 to massive international acclaim. The Washington Post called the book, “a moving work of lyrical and at times hallucinatory beauty… that reads like a hybrid of John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road'”. It won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize. In France it was shortlisted for the Prix Jean Monnet for European Literature, among other prizes. It was a book of the year in the Guardian, the Irish Independent, Kirkus and Esquire, a Staff Pick at The Paris Review and an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review.

BEYOND THE SEA was published in September 2019 to wide critical acclaim in the UK, Ireland, Australia and the US. The Wall Street Journal called the book "mesmerising"; The Guardian called the book “frightening but beautiful”, while The Sunday Times said it had “echoes of Melville, Dostoyevsky and William Golding”. It was chosen as a book of the year in the Irish Independent by Sebastian Barry who called the book "masterly". In 2021, it was published to wide acclaim in France where it won the 2022 Prix Gens de Mers.

PROHET SONG was published to ravishing praise in August 2023 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. John Boyne in The Sunday Independent called Prophet Song "entirely original". The Observer called the book "a crucial book for our current times... brilliant, haunting". The TLS called it "thunderously powerful". The Guardian called it "an urgent, important read". The Literary Review called the book "a masterly novel".

Paul Lynch was born in Limerick in 1977, grew up in Co Donegal, and lives in Dublin. He was previously the chief film critic of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper from 2007 to 2011, and wrote regularly for The Sunday Times on cinema. He is a full-time novelist.

Reviews

[Paula K · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You are the strong one now.”

Winter is coming in the year of 1845 and 14 year old Grace from Blackmountain in Northern Donegal is quickly pushed out the door to find her own way during the Irish Famine. Grace’s mother, Sarah, has too many mouths to feed, so she sends her daughter on her way after cutting her hair and getting Grace into her father’s old clothes.

With gorgeous prose, Paul Lynch sets Grace on a journey to make her way across Ireland in the hopes of finding a better life. What Grace finds, however, is a land of dying crops and desperate people. Disguised as a boy, Grace picks up one job after another always exhausted and on the brink of starvation. Toughtened by harsh circumstances Grace withstands oppressive hardship by joining others on the road. She travels with hardened and violent people and then finds herself joining Bart, a kind and protective young man of eighteen.

During Grace’s travels, Lynch brilliantly portrays a distressed landscape exposed to too much rain and flooding in such a poetic way. However, as Grace grows strong and endures, her resilience shows there is hope for her and the unyielding land.

Lynch’s Grace is a compelling story and beautifully written. The characters that Grace meets on the road are so well described in their misfortune. The setting is grim and haunting. The obliviousness of the weathly to the poor’s plight is heartbreaking, but one history has shown us time and time again.

This is a book I will never forget...

5 out of 5 stars

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

The beginnings of the blight have reached their little corner of the world on Blackmountain, north of Donegal. It is the end of October, winter closing in, soon calling an end to 1845. The harvest has failed, people have taken to carrying guns for protection against thieves. The rains, floods, have barely ceased that year.

On the eve of the Samhain, the festival marking the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter, 14 year-old Grace is jolted from sleep, heaved from her bed by her mother, Sarah. She’s dragged from her room, through the doors of their home, forcing her, finally, to the killing stump. As Grace’s mind races to find some meaning for this, her mother grabs her hair in one hand, and with her other hand begins to hack it off with a knife.

”All the things you can see in a moment. She thinks, there is truth after all to Colly’s story. She thinks, the last you will see of Mam is her shadow. She thinks, take with you a memory of all this. A sob loosens from the deepest part and sings itself out.”

After, she opens her eyes to see her 12 year-old brother Colly clutching fistfuls her hair. Her mother places her hands on her seven-month swell of her own belly, saying only:

“You are the strong one now.

She watches from a distance as her mother sits on a chair outside waiting on Boggs, the man who is father to Grace’s younger siblings and to the unborn infant her mother is carrying. She sees her place Bran to her breast to nurse, but she has no milk to give.

Her mother is frightened of Boggs now, having nothing to feed her children, let alone him, and Grace knows that her mother is afraid of more, she is afraid for Grace. The way that Boggs has started to look at her.

As she begins her journey, her breasts bound and her hair shorn, wearing her father’s old clothes, her mother’s last instructions were for her to head to town, pretend to be her brother, and look for Dinny Doherty, hoping he will find her some kind of work. It isn’t long before Colly joins her, and his incessant chattering keeps Grace from feeling as much of the pain, keeps her from the grief that wants to swallow her whole. Even when he is not actually speaking, she hears his banter, knows what he would say, teaching her to speak, behave more like a man, telling a joke to lighten the mood.

Eventually she finds work on a small crew, and then another, and eventually she works her way around the country, passing as a boy, living life outside of the law when necessary. As time passes, and the death rate climbs, tempers are frayed, and life becomes almost untenable, all she can think of is returning home.

This is not your average coming-of-age story; it’s a story about love, family, and home, woven through a devastating historic era. A glimpse at the Great Famine that is so honestly portrayed and yet lovely, relaying the horror of the surroundings in gorgeous prose, bleak surroundings that still maintain an aura of hope. The ghosts that haunt us. The ghosts of those haunting Grace, haunt these pages.

While I was not aware of this until after I read this, “Grace” is the sequel to Paul Lynch’s ”Red Sky in Morning.” It is a lovely read as a stand-alone novel, although I do now plan to read ”Red Sky in Morning” because this was wonderful.

The quotes used in this review are subject to change prior to publication.


Published: 11 Jul 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profound scourge that visited upon a people and left nothing but stone upon stone.

This was the Great Famine of Ireland from 1845-1852. It carved a blackened nitch in history in which the Irish tried to scratch out an existence overshadowed by dying crops in the field and dying wee ones in their beds. It spared no one.....

Paul Lynch pulls back the curtain of his story with Sarah yanking her young fourteen year old daughter, Grace, from her bed and near scalping her of her long red locks. She forces Grace into her father's old, tattered clothes and sends her out into the countryside to look for a means of survival in these times. "You are the strong one now."

Grace knows that her mother has been beseiged by too many mouths to feed and the visitations of Boggs, the bully who collects the rent and a bit more from Sarah. So Grace takes to the road leaving Blackmountain at the very top of Donegal in search of a way to keep herself and her family alive. "And then like light, the awareness passes and she grabs hold of her hate."

Lynch paints this storyline with the aching colors of reality. Grace, disguised as a young boy, interfaces with fellow Irish along the way who will beg, barter, sell, and near kill for the chance to live another day. Abandonment catches on every page and snags at the heart. Hope dies on once fertile branches on every tree in every townland. Those who stay put will surely die and those who take to the roads may surely die as well.

As McNutt, one of Grace's newly met cronies, says: "What new hell is this?"

We Irish are dipped in the descriptive and Paul Lynch never misses an opportunity to take you into the midst of an action decked out in fine prose. Please know this as you partake in this wonderfully written adventure deep in detail. You'll come across lines that deserve to be spoken out loud and more than once.

Lynch's story of Grace rivets sound to the unvoiced grief of these times. My very own McGroty family left Grace's Donegal during the famine and my O'Donnell clan from County Cork. And Lynch shines a light on the resilience and fortitude of a people facing the unspeakable. His characters nearly stare up at you from the pages. The story is raw and Grace's situations reflect the relentless pressure that knocked on every door at hours unforeseen. A remarkable read by a very remarkable author.

I received a copy of Grace through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Little, Brown and Company and to Paul Lynch for the opportunity.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's 1845 and the great famine in Ireland has created hunger, desperate times and a frightened people who will do anything to survive....and they do.

Coming of age is a tough road to hoe for 14 year old Grace as she is ripped from her bed by a mother who wants to save her from physical abuse....before Boggs returns....with a hope that, as the oldest child, she can find work and help their family, but warns her...."These are dangerous times, Grace."

As Grace travels across the country from one job to the next dressed as a boy starving and alone, the memory of a tragic loss become troubled dreams with a ghostly voice presence that follows and directs her...sometimes evil...actions.

GRACE, (for me) started out strong, but turned into a somewhat tedious read with too wordy a prose albeit great storyline that fell flat.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+

“How do you feel every minute of the dragging dark, cannot decide which is worse, the way hunger gnaws your body or the way cold gnaws on what’s left.”

If you change your appearance, become a boy in the eyes of the world, are your chances of surviving the Great Famine better? Can you give up your family, your home, everything you have ever known for that chance? Grace did not have a choice. She was just a child, barely a teen, when her mother, out of love, made that choice for her.

Grace’s journey through a ravaged Ireland is one of unimaginable hardship and despair. Lynch’s evocative prose brings her to life, a life on the brink of death. Her circumstances are bleak and made worse by the frequent moments of fear, remembered Irish superstitions and divine retribution for sin. “She thinks, sometimes the devil waits on the road and walks with you and other times the devil waits inside your head and gives your thoughts to speak.”

This book, like most stories about horrific historical events, is not upbeat, no bright sun shining through. Yet, there is beauty. Grace’s strength, the friendships and love shown even in the worst moments were extraordinary. I often put myself in Grace’s situation. I am no Grace. I would have just given up. No food week after week, month after month? I get crabby just skipping a meal. I am no survivor of deprivation.

This novel was published in 2017, one of the author’s earliest books. I have not read Prophet Song for which he won the Booker Prize in 2023, but the masterful writing in Grace was just the forerunner of more amazing novels.

[Dmitry Berkut · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dense yet hypnotic novel, more about how the world is perceived than about what happens in it. Lynch writes from inside the mind of a girl wandering through Ireland during the Great Famine — a mind still unseparated from the world, perceiving it with an almost primal immediacy. Her perception moves not through reflection but through breath: reality is grasped directly, without distance, so that landscape, pain, sleep, hunger, and fear merge into a single substance. The world exists as a vision, yet every detail remains material and tangible — mud, damp wind, the breath of a horse, the thud of a heart.

This is not a poetic rendering of suffering but a hallucinatory documentary — a consciousness on the edge, where sensation and word coincide. Lynch recreates an archaic way of seeing, when thought had not yet become idea, when it still lived in things, when the outer and the inner were not yet apart. The text both mesmerizes and exhausts: the reader is granted no distance, drawn into the same current that carries the heroine. There seems to be no other way to tell such an experience.
The novel seeks neither sympathy nor explanation. It simply places the reader inside someone else's delirium — into that murk where despair becomes a form of faith. Hence the strange impression: as if you were reading not about the past, but from within it.

[Alees · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una pinta d'inchiostro irlandese

“Questo ottobre allagato”

È cominciata così, con un universo dispiegato in tre parole.
È finita un’ora e mezza dopo, a pagina novantasette, quando ho finalmente tirato il fiato e l’incantesimo di quell’incipit fulminante, che mi aveva incatenata alle pagine, stava allentando un poco la sua presa.
Questa pinta di inchiostro irlandese è scura e densa come sangue rappreso, assorbe la luce e ogni principio di movimento, è il sipario nero della fame che avvolge i sensi, la cenere che riempie le ossa, la strada sbarrata della speranza.
È la Great Famine che si abbatte sull’Irlanda tra il 1845 e il 1849. Un milione i morti, un altro milione a inseguire una vita a brandelli emigrando.
Anche il gaelico rischierà di scomparire.

Scomparire e riaffiorare.
Si sprofonda in questo inchiostro vischioso di disperazione, tra le ombre livide della viltà, il rosso cardinale della sopraffazione, il grigio spento della rassegnazione, la grafia minuta e cangiante dell’illusione e il colpo oscuro del disinganno.
La peluria sui volti dei bambini affamati graffia le pagine, il pasto dei folli sull’orlo della fossa comune tinge i fogli di nero e ripugnanza.
Sprofondi e riaffiori, aggrappandoti alla prossima parola come se dovessi stanare la speranza anche dalla gola di un drago.
E le parole arrivano, ancora e ancora, a tratti spigolose e spietate, a tratti luminose e soffuse di dolcezza. Sono una possibilità.
Sono lanterne appese nel buio dell’universo.

"C'è una sola realtà, dove sei in questo momento, e quando cerchi di guardarti indietro la realtà diventa sogno. Tutto il resto è come parlare ai cavalli."

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is, she thinks, as if memory were hidden not in thought but deep within the physical arrangement of things." This seems to be the basis behind this epic Irish novel about the potato famine, as narrated by a young woman named Grace, who comes of age during this harshest of times. Warning, if you do not love poetic, lyrical prose, skip this one. Even I had trouble with it, and almost stopped reading. At about page 125, I started sensing a more smooth rhythm (or perhaps I adjusted) and the story became more vivid and compelling. However, there were still times I felt as if I were reading Joyce's Ulysses, one of those books you are told are classic and a must read but which many people don't enjoy reading. I skimmed a lot. But not all the time. There were passages I loved, and I greatly admired the story as a whole. But this one seems to rely too heavily on the prose and the atmosphere it calls up "in the arrangement of things," which is dark and dismal and real, and not on satisfying the reader. I found myself rooting for Bart, the young man she joins forces with for much of the novel. I will leave it at that, but the end, for me, lacked emotion after making it through 350 pages with Grace, and many with Bart. You end feeling her defeat, not the light she admires. Still, words I could never pen myself, and an original evocation of a dark period in history, so a 4.

[Jean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why do I believe the reviews in The Washington Post? They make the book sound so awesome and I fall for it nearly every time. Well, once again I bought this one on my Kindle and I should have paid more attention to the sample. It was way too long and a bit too stream of conscious for me. I did finish it but only because I was determined to make the best of it. I was interested in knowing what happened in the end and I guess I could have skipped ahead, but...I slogged through it. I don't necessarily recommend it. Others seem to like it though, he's won awards, so don't take only my word for it. Ireland, famine, endless wandering, abuse, illness, voices speaking in her head, dead bodies in ditches, beggars, frozen wastelands...you get the picture. If that intrigues you, this is the one for you.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

2 million people died in The Irish Potato Famine when blight destroyed three years of potato crops between 1845 to 1851.

In his novel Grace, Paul Lynch recreates Ireland during the famine. The writing is gorgeous, the protagonist, Grace, memorable, the descriptions of what she experiences while on the road crushing.

Think of a journey story set in a Dystopian world, such as The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Consider that the story is history, that the starvation, despair, disease, and the ever present threat of death are historical. Realize that government and the wealthy could have alleviated the suffering. It is a crushing realization of how those of means and comfort justify their selfish self-interest. Then consider the great need in the world today, in America, in your own hometown, and know that nothing has really changed. We still turn a blind eye and hold to 'truths' about self-reliance and just deserts.

Grace's mother provides a cottage for her children by an arrangement with Boggs, who visits her as payment for his largess. But as Grace nears puberty, Boggs notices the girl. One night Grace is roused and her mother shears off her hair and orders her to dress in men's clothing. The next day her mother insists she eat a rare meal of meat and orders her out of the house to find work as a man, hopefully to return with full pockets.

Confused and unwilling, Grace hangs around and is joined by her younger brother Colly. Colly instructs Grace on manliness, how to smoke a pipe to damp the hunger, and his chatter fills the void. They seek out empty huts or animal sheds for shelter, shivering in the cold. After an accident takes Colly, his voice and comments are still heard by Grace, become a part of her, and she answers back in whispers.

Grace journeys from town to town, picking up work where she can. She mimics men's behavior while noticing the swelling of her breasts. She passes through villages where the starving hawk their shreds of clothing while emaciated children stand listless. She finds herself with rough company, thieves, men who have detected her sex and follow her, and finally Bart, who becomes her protector.
"This is no way to live."
Bart and Grace travel across the country, to people and places from his past, hoping to find work, to learn there is nothing left of the Ireland he had known.

"Don't you see what is going on around you? The have-it-alls and well-to-doers who don't give a fuck what happens to the ordinary people," Bart tells Grace. "The people are living off hope. Hope is the lie they want you to believe in. It is hope that carries you along. Keeps you in your place. Keeps you down. Let me tell you something. I do not hope. I do not hope for anything in the least because to hope is to depend on others. And so I will make my own luck. I believe there are not rules anymore. We are truly on our own in all this." And at the last, "The gods have abandoned us, that's how I figure it. It is time to be your own god."

Grace is nearly dead when she is rescued, then must find the strength to escape her rescuer and return home. The book ends with Grace, age nineteen, the famine over, pregnant and living with a man she trusts, with hope for the future.

Lynch has accomplished something remarkable in this historical novel, for he not only has created a memorable protagonist and a story of growing up, not only a vivid picture of Ireland during The Great Hunger, but he has given readers a book that raises our awareness of suffering and how, in the past and in the present, every one of means who turns away is responsible.

I found this one of the most memorable novels I have read this year.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in Ireland in the 1840s, during the Great Famine, Grace Coyle must leave her home and fend for herself. Dressed as a boy, she wanders the countryside, trying to avoid the many dangers. It is a time of belief in pookas, witches, ghosts, and curses.

People are starving, Many wander the roads, thieving for coins or food. It is a journey, where the goal is to survive. At various times Grace becomes a herder and a bridge-builder. She meets a man with a withered arm who helps her, and another that gets her into trouble. She is accompanied by the ghost of her brother and, later, by the ghost of a murdered woman.

This book is grim. There is little opportunity to lighten the tone. It is a mix of beautiful writing and horrific subject matter. If you dislike profanity, you will want to stay away. The ghost of the brother is constantly chattering with a stream of invective, mostly calling Grace misogynistic names. This got old after a short while, and it goes on for three-fourths of the book. It evokes a miserable time in Irish history in vivid terms. For me, the expressive writing is the best part and the reason I would read another book by this author.

“You think you make your own choices in life but we are nothing but blind wanderers, moving from moment to moment, our blindness forever new to us.”

[Roos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dang.

This book truly shook me. It is a story of a teenage girl's attempt at survival in the years of the Irish Famine, which I hardly knew anything about. Last October, I was actually in Ireland. Somehow now, after realising the scale of what happened, it seems crazy how unaware I was. Not for one second did I take this history into account while I was taking in the country for the first time. When I go back, I'm quite sure I will notice different things, look with new eyes.

What I am impressed by is how Paul Lynch explores how a person tries, in such an extensive trauma as this, to hold onto a sense of self or - when that fails - a sense of their humanity. He discusses the boundaries of what keeps us human by testing boundaries of language and style, too. In this way, he manages to find words for the unspeakable. The story he tells is only believable because it is nearly impossible, in normal words, to tell it.

It's a tragedy that is neither cheapened for thrill nor lightened for comfort.
It's really a very, very good book.

P.S. The depressing quality of this book is perfectly suited to the equally depressing month that is February.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

насчет Дикенза, как ее рекламируют, не знаю, эт вряд ли, скорее все ж таки написано с оглядкой на Эктора Мало и его "Без семьи". ну или эдакая "Верная закалка" в декорациях то ли Босха, то ли "Мертвеца", только без гитары Нила Янга. и, конечно, ирладская легенда о странствии, поэтому не нужно ждать исторической точности от текста, он вневременен

а удивительность текста этого в том, что он реально позволяет многому научиться у автора, хотя казалось бы, что нового можно теперь прочесть. оказывается, есть еще возможности удивиться литературе. текст как картинка "волшебный глаз": расфокусируешься, и проявляется нечто иное, за словами.

[Amanda NEVER MANDY · Rating 5 out of 5]

**I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.**

Where to begin…how about with Grace herself, a fiery little she-devil that was the center of this story. A young girl on the cusp of womanhood thrust out into a hard and cruel world by a family in need, told to pretend to be a boy to maximize on whatever income or goods available to her. Her mom basically telling her to be this to get us that and hurry because we are down to nothing.

I absolutely adored Grace. She went through hell and back and fought with everything she had to get through it, just trying to survive in a world that was unmercifully cruel at every turn. Always willing to move forward regardless of the obstacle in front of her. I loved her innocence and her desire to know and understand more. The author’s portrayal of such a strong character was perfection.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book even though it wasn’t the simplest or fastest read. The author’s voice was strong and descriptive and not one that flowed gently. His river of words carved a long and lazy river into the landscape with sharp edges stealthily placed here and there mixed with dangers lurking on every shore. I had to take it real slow and easy so I could absorb every little detail ensuring that my mind’s picture would be painted big, bold and beautiful, as it was meant to be.

[Iryna Chernyshova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Чомусь менш сподобався мій четвертий Лінч, але сильний автор і авточитаємий все одно.

Темно, хтонічно, часто неприємно - що може бути краще в кінці жовтня.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Lynch is consistent in resisting the label of historical fiction for this novel. He is quite right. It is a novel set during the Irish Famine, but it is a literary novel and about the journey and survival of an adolescent girl. It is beautifully written, and despite the length, it is not a book you will get bogged down in.

The story of Grace who is sent away by her mother and from her home, Black Mountain, in Donegal, is a story of resilience. It is the first autumn of the famine, and her father has gone ( for those who have read Red Sky in Morning, Graces's father is the protagonist who goes to Ameica). Her mother cannot manage to feed all of her children so Grace has to leave.

This at times reads like an epic tale (fairy tale perhaps) of a girl who disguises herself as a boy, always just escapes starvation by a hair, survives violence, and just keeps on. She manages to walk from Donegal in the northwest of the country, to Tipperary. But this is not a story of magical realism at all. It is instead a stunning description of the landscape of the famine and an adolescent girl, who again and again escapes death. This novel is never relentless, and it avoids being bleak. Lynch is able to do this by not repeating endless descriptions of the devastation. Instead, he focuses on single characteristics of a scene, such as the description of entering a village where Grace notes the pervasive silence. In another, the eerie scene of a dead family standing in a shop doorway as if they're waiting for it to open. The small group of starving locals who show up for the obligatory preaching by a Protestant evangelical, and the 3 young children in the group appearing to have no clothing except mud.

The setting is sad but it is a story of hope and more. Lynch writes stunning prose, and for that reason alone, you should read this novel

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

via my blog https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
“And then, for a moment, she sees her mother as someone different, thinks by seeing Sarah in the looking glass she can see her truly as she is- a woman who might once have been young and wears a glimmer of it still. The way this fifth pregnancy is graying her. And then like light the awareness passes and she grabs hold of her hate.”

Paul Lynch disturbs the reader with the shock of 14 year old Grace’s fate during the Great Famine in 1845, Ireland when the potato harvest was mysteriously destroyed by blight. Ripped from her sleep, Grace’s mother takes her to the ‘killing stump’, seeing only her shadow, believing it is the last she’ll see of her mother, she remains alive but fistfuls of her hair are in her brother’s hands. With children to feed, everyone going hungry her mother waits for Bogs (her siblings father)- Bogs who has suddenly started to hunger for beautiful young grace. In order to survive, to find work- she must venture forth as an impostor of sorts, pretending to be her own brother Colly. Her brother decides to join her, teaching her how to be ‘a man’ and shuck her femininity. Fearful as they are out on the night of the dead “Samhain” ( A Gaelic festival that celebrates end of the harvest and the start of the coldest half of the year), they know they must find refuge before the spirits find them. It is the living, though, they should fear.

When they escape the danger of Boggs yet again, they meet something worse on the river trying to pull a sheep out of the water, one that would make a delightful, much needed meal in their bellies. Trying to navigate the land riverside, angry that the pooka are playing tricks, hiding what she needs, attempting to bargain with them to no avail she catch a break. As she tries to reach her brother and help him, the river has it’s own ideas, and in a moment she is more alone than ever. But Colly’s voice is never far, and soon he is inside of her head, guiding her as she finds work with a road crew, but there are certain things about a woman that cannot remain hidden and expose her for what she is. When she ‘bleeds’ she thinks ‘for sure now I am dying. My insides are melting.” Even wonders “What if it is some disease? What if it is the old witch’s curse?”

Even among the starving men, hungry for more than just food, there is rescue. Saved from the dangerous intentions and violence of men by the ‘good hand of John Bart’ she travels all over Ireland with him as company. She should be thankful but thinks him ‘Mr. Conceited Breeches” with “eyes that permit no watcher to see into them but see through you instead.” Always walking on foot, weary, hungry “she imagines her feet like bruised fruit”. Hunger, death, criminal elements… Lynch shows us a dangerous world through Grace. That there is still hope and spiritual musings in the midst of starvation and so much death gives this novel heart. The writing is beautiful, and the language makes you feel transported into the past. For anyone that enjoys historical fiction, you will sink into Grace’s weary shoes.

Publication Date: July 11, 2017

Little, Brown & Company

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has taken me quite a few weeks to finish Grace and I’ll admit I did struggle with it at times, finding myself skimming the last few chapters.  There always seemed to be another book that was more demanding of my attention or more in tune with my reading mood.  However, I have now finished it and the book is certainly notable for its lyrical, poetic language, imaginative metaphors and at times impressionistic style (most clearly illustrated in the chapter entitled ‘Crow’ which approaches stream of consciousness).

Some examples of the book’s striking descriptive language:
‘The rain comes yoked to a hooded sun, unfastens and falls like a cloak.’
‘Hedgerows huddle along the road and mutter the breeze like watchers.’
‘Rain suddens heavy and tuneful, makes all the earth sing a blind song of itself.’

And this arresting metaphor, as Grace desperately seeks shelter at cottages she passes on the road:
‘Every ear listening for the sound of coughing, for sickness tramps through the snow and leaves footprints and when it knocks at your door it wants to come in, lean over the fire, take a sup of your soup, lie down on the straw, spread itself out, and bring everybody else into its company.’

The book depicts in harrowing detail the intense suffering of the Irish people during what came to be known as the ‘Great Hunger’ or ‘Great Famine’ between 1845 and 1849 when the potato crop failed in successive years.  Each day became a struggle for food, warmth and shelter and people were forced to steal, beg or worse to find sustenance.  Through Grace’s eyes the reader witnesses the dreadful scenes of starvation, disease and death and the appalling contrast between the rich unaffected by food shortages and the poor of the towns or countryside reduced to destitution.

Grace’s brother, Colly, becomes her ever-present conscience, guiding her thoughts and actions with, at times, remarkable insight and always with impish, black humour.   Grace is a story of courage, despair, suffering, cruelty and resilience.  Towards the end of the book, a seemingly miraculous and life changing act of mercy turns out to mask something baser.  However, the concluding pages of the book suggest there may be hope of something better.

For me, Grace was definitely a book to admire rather than to love.   However, I’m aware that there are many readers who have both admired and loved it.  It certainly merits its Goodreads description as ‘an epic coming-of-age novel and a poetic evocation of the Irish famine as it has never been written.’ Furthermore, I can definitely understand how its lyrical language and the nature of the events it depicts would have attracted the admiration of the judges of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.  However, I’ll confess that it is my least favourite of all the shortlisted books I’ve read.

[Alison Eden · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book as part of a Goodreads Giveaway and my commitment to give a review of the book was the only reason that stopped me giving up on this book. I did not like it, it was definitely not for me. Firstly I found the language very difficult to follow and found myself having to re-read lots of it to try to understand it. The description of the book was certainly in a much easier to read format and had the book followed this style I 'may' have enjoyed it more. The lack of quotation marks made it confusing in parts and I found the pace to be really slow and at times boring and repetitive. I appreciate that the nature of the storyline is quite dark and gloomy but I found this did not make the book easy reading for me although I think I may have enjoyed the actual story had it been written in a different style.

[Shashi Martynova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Великая история.
Он слон -- и Линч, и роман его. В каноне писаний про Великий голод, несомненно, прямо-таки генделевское по густоте высказывание. Блистательная попытка показать эту величайшую трагедию в истории Ирландии глазами ребенка-который-выжил. При этом ни тебе ревизионизма, ни тебе нац.пафоса. Плотность текста такова, что я субъективно прожила в нем те самые несколько лет, сколько претерпела их главная героиня. После таких романов контузия гарантирована, но это чудесный -- в самом нейтральном смысле слова -- опыт.
И да: весь текст автор сделал так, что он практически дольник. 15 авторских листов дольника. Такой же морок и speechworm, как гекзаметр.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite a difficult read...due to the unrelieved misery of the tale. I understand due to the time this book is set why this must be so, but slogging through the language and style of writing of the story made it even harder to take the details. It was written quite well and I enjoyed the story until the last few chapters. Then I really got bored with the style and the quick wrap up of Grace's story. Not sorry I read it, but would never recommend it or read it again.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grace is my third of the six novels short-listed for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. (The other two I’ve read are Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach and Rachel Malik’s Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves.)

Grace seems to have a very divided reception. Many readers praise its lyrical Irish prose and the evocation of the dismal suffering wrought by the Irish Potato Famine in the middle of the 19th Century.

For me, however, it was a slog, as epic in nature as the one undertaken by Grace herself in the novel. In 1845, when Grace is fourteen, her mother Sarah, pregnant with her fifth child and already suffering penury, fears that Grace’s mostly absent father, Boggs, has started showing an unnatural interest in Grace. So Sarah wakes her in the middle of the night, cuts her hair extremely short, dresses her as a boy, and kicks her out of the house, telling her to go find work somehow and to return after the failed crop is behind them with some money saved.

Grace’s younger brother, Colly, sneaks out to go with her as she leaves Donegal and starts wandering south. The rest of the novel is the five-year odyssey Grace undergoes before returning. I won’t spoil any of the plot details beyond that much, in case you choose to read this one yourself.

My problem with the novel is that it’s a journey without much of a purpose other than survival (important, to be sure, but hard to sustain for 350 pages of aimless wandering through poverty and hopelessness).

Grace comes of age on this trip, and in the last chapter, she considers what her five-year journey has taught her: “you think you make your own choices in life but we are nothing but blind wanderers, moving from moment to moment, our blindness forever new to us.” It’s scant consolation for the misery that is her journey and her life. This one just doesn’t hold any appeal for me, in the end.

[Gunnar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine traurige und bittere Geschichte (veröffentlicht 2017) über das große irische Trauma, die Große Hungersnot ab 1845, vom diesjährigen Booker Prize-Gewinner Paul Lynch. Grace ist mit 14 das älteste Kind der alleinerziehenden Mutter Sarah. Eines Tages werden Grace von ihrer Mutter die Haare abgeschnitten und sie vor die Tür gesetzt: Sie soll fortgehen, sich als Junge alleine durchschlagen, die Mutter kann kaum die anderen Kinder ernähren und der Pächter macht auch schon Andeutungen in Bezug auf Grace. So zieht sie von dannen, anfangs begleitet durch ihren jüngeren Bruder Colly, und erlebt eine wahre Odyssee voller Armut, Dreck, Hunger, Unterdrückung und roher Gewalt bis hin an die Grenzen der Menschlichkeit.

Die Große Hungersnot bedeutete eine Zäsur in der irischen Geschichte, vom Bevölkerungsverlust durch Tod und Auswanderung hat man sich bis ins 21. Jahrhundert nicht erholt. Das Ereignis hat in der irischen Kultur und Literatur dementsprechend einen großen Nachhall erfahren. Paul Lynch wählt als Protagonistin eine junge Heranwachsende, doch eine Coming-of-Age-Geschichte wird es dadurch nicht. Grace wird quasi über Nacht erwachsen und muss sich in einer sehr rauen Welt behaupten und ums Überleben kämpfen. Lynch schildert dies düster und eindringlich, in einer rauen Poetik mit langen Sätzen, irischer Mystik, Gedankenströmen und vielen Passagen mit einer Zwiesprache mit ihrem (verschwundenen) Bruder - also quasi als verkappter Monolog. Das ist als Leser nicht so leicht wegzulesen, sondern fordernd. Die Handlung ist überschaubar, der Roman lebt von der Schilderung der Verhältnisse und des Seelenzustands der Protagonistin. Ein wenig zu lang ist der Roman aus meiner Sicht geraten, vor allem den vorletzten Abschnitt des Buches empfand ich als überflüssig und aufgesetzt. Dennoch fand ich insgesamt diesen Weg durch die Düsternis der Großen Hungersnot ansprechend und lesenswert.

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

14-year-old Grace is wakened in the wee hours one morning by her mother who cuts her hair, dresses her like a boy and sends her out on the road to make her own way. It is the era of the potato famine in Ireland. Mam can no longer manage to feed all of her children, and doesn't like the way Grace's stepfather is starting to look at her.
The horrors that Grace endures, and her stubborn spirit, make this book very hard to put down.
At first, I was a little put off by the style of writing. It's kind of stream of consciousness, and with no quotation marks or attributions around speech, so sometimes it's hard to tell who is talking, or whether Grace is speaking or just thinking. But don't be put off by that and back away in horror from this book. It's not Ulysses. Once you get used to the style, it seems perfect for the nightmare world that Grace is living in.
Grace, and many of the people she encounters, are corrupted by their suffering and the collapse of civilized behavior. And she is ultimately saved by grace (giving the book's title a clever double meaning). The salvation that she receives comes at the hands of very imperfect human beings, but it is grace nevertheless. So the book goes deeper than just Grace's heartbreaking experiences. It is, more deeply, the story of everyone's life. As a Christian I am supposed to believe that our salvation is in Jesus and I do believe that is true - ultimately. But, day by day, we are corrupted by the hardships of our lives. And day by day, we are saved by the bumbling kindness of other imperfect beings like ourselves. We suffer, and yet we continue, by the grace of each other. This is one of the themes of my own novel.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saint's Mistress: http://www.synergebooks.com/ebook_sai...

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 4 out of 5]

After I read the excellent book of Hannah Kent The Good People I wanted to read this equally gloomy historical novel about mid 19th century Ireland. In this we follow the story of a girl who, at the beginning of the great famine, is forced to leave her home in search of a job. On the road, crossing the hard-hitted country, she sees the tragedy, faces many dangers, and through this process she is reaching adulthood.

In contrast with the book I mention earlier, in this the author is far less emotional and sentimental and this almost unemotional prose almost made me abandon the book, but as I was passing through the pages I realise that this was the proper way to bring us the mentality of the main characters. In this extremely difficult situation seems that the only defence they can have is the emotional detachment from everything and that's what they mostly do. The real problem is that this detachment leads them even further, to denounce any human emotion to concentrate in survival at any cost and this raises many questions about human nature in extreme conditions

So in the end I can say that this book is very interesting and well written although is not a novel that will have a devastating impact on the reader. A 4 is thus the appropriate rating.

[Deanne Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's 1845 in Ireland and the famine is full upon it's people. There is hunger,and a terrible desperation to survive. You never know what you will do to survive until you are in this situation. Ripped from her bed in the night by her mother,her hair chopped off with a knife she is told, you are the strong one now. Since she is the oldest she is forced out of her house to find work and help better her family. Grace is 14 when she is put out of her house and she faces many harsh realities as she travels by foot along the roads. She is dressed as a man for her protection and she must learn to act and walk like a man. She also takes to smoking a pipe and finds it relaxing. At times a ghostly voice presence follows her and directs her to do things that aren't always on the up and up. Grace's life was a very harsh reality and coming of age did not come easy for her.
Sometimes the arrangement of the words just didn't make sense to me and there were harsh and swear words in here that I was not pleased to read.
Pub Date 11 Jul 2017
Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for a review copy in exchange for honest review.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faulknerian
Steinbeckian
McCarthyian
Means great prose
Great sentences
Picaresque
Unconventionally told at times
Haunting
Dreamlike
Memorable road
Memorable characters
Hypnotic and mesmerizing prose at times, haunting at times, a terrible beauty, a tragedy and journey tale of the poor and hungry with a female main protagonist Grace, will she fall from grace? in the harrowing conditions upon earth.
Grace: Tough but also tender innocence against the storm of savagery and desperation.
This author masterly evoking sense of place, scene and people.
Sheer graceful prose in Grace by Paul Lynch

http://more2read.com/review/grace-paul-lynch/

[J.S. Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the hype from the publisher, there is nothing sweeping about the story nor does it have Dickensian complexity of characters nor its underfed plot.

The heroine, Grace, moves listlessly across the famine landscape. She is not proactive nor particularly motivated by anything even during periods of having adequate food. Much of the verbiage is hallucinating (auditory) about her younger brother who has drowned in the initial days of their journey. There are contemporaneous accounts from the famine, and eyewitness accounts, and newspaper reports and all sorts of resources. This seems a pallid effort to convey the stark reality. Adopting a style that imitates The Road is a weak effort.

Lynch uses ornate if not tortured imagery to describe the simplest of things: the weather, a bird, a sound, and sometimes multiple similes and images on one page, making it annoying to read more than ten pages at a go. The work is self-conscious if not pretentious.

[Berit Westhoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vier sterren maar het boek is wel zo deprimerend dat ik het niet aan zou raden.

[Atticus06 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finito di leggerlo ho provato una piccola delusione per questo libro di Paul Lynch. Avevo grosse aspettative perché il tema mi è sempre piaciuto. Miseria estrema; Irlanda; la terribile carestia che affllisse l’isola a metà del 1800, quando una malattia delle patate mise in ginocchio l’intero paese. Carovane umane di mendicanti, bambini abbandonati a sé stessi, vinti dai morsi della fame. Si mangiava la corteccia degli alberi pur di acquietare quei morsi e l’abbrutimento che ne conseguiva era tanto terribile quanto umano. E Lynch non ci risparmia nulla. Procede a raccontarci la storia di Grace e della sua solitudine, solo per poco affrancata dai sui accoliti, in miseria quanto lei, descrivendo il suo vagare per l’Irlanda in un modo che di solito si definisce «denso», aggettivo abusato ma che in questo caso trovo sia perfetto per descrivere l’ambiente che circonda Grace. Denso di terrore, paura, di verità.
Quando, all’inizio del libro, alla quindicenne Grace vengono tagliati i capelli con un coltello per farla somigliare a un maschietto, per nascondere il nascere di quella femminilità che, in un mondo abbrutito, avrebbe richiamato le attenzioni delle anime nere che vagano ormai senza i limiti imposti dalla civiltà, cacciata di casa da una madre allo stremo delle forze, che affida la figlia al destino e a quella natura cupa, umida, che sta distruggendo le speranze di un popolo, si percepisce chiaramente quanto amara sarà la sua esperienza. Un viaggio picaresco dove al peggioramento delle condizioni corrisponde un abbrutimento non giudicabile dal lettore, perché «necessario». Eppure, l’interessante storia di Grace e delle persone con cui entra in contatto è rovinata, a mio parere, dallo stile dello scrittore. Stile che appesantisce ogni descrizione dell’ambiente che, a quanto leggo in una recensione dell’Indice su Cielo rosso al mattino, altro libro di Lynch, richiama volutamente lo stile di Cormac McCarthy, scrittore amato da Lynch, e che produce echi Faulkneriani, con le dovute differenze.
Il fatto è che lo stile sicuramente partecipa a rendere animalesca e pulsante quella natura infida che accerchia i protagonisti della storia, ma che alla lunga diventa ridondante e forzato.
Dove «il vento fa rotolare una foglia morta, o un passerotto, o magari l’anima di una persona defunta». «Le strade strette afferrano il buio e lo stringono forte.» Dove «L’intonaco scrostato è rigato da rivoli di lacrime». E dove Grace «rammenda con l’ago da cucito del suo orecchio le grida, il chiacchiericcio, il rumore e i fischi». E continua con la protagonista che «osserva il non cielo e nota che è sceso giù a incontrare questo non fiume per poi macinarlo nel mare». E tutto questo nell’arco di una decina di pagine.
Nella recensione di Cielo rosso al mattino su L’indice, Matteo Fontanone lo definisce così:

Nel tentativo di restituire stilisticamente le tinte lugubri del racconto, Lynch ricorre spesso a effetti di suono e figure retoriche espressive, in particolar modo nella messa a fuoco della natura, nella resa della luce e del clima di terre che dipinge come primordiali: “L’incudine di una nube appuntita rotolò rumoreggiando da ovest”.

Dove anche la luna è «gibbosa», racconta Fontanone. Ed è questo stile che mi ha, se si può dire, indispettito. Perché trovo che questo metodo espressivo sia più efficace quando meno presente. Ma qui Lynch infarcisce ogni due pagine di iperboli che trovo personalmente irritanti, se non comici in certi casi, perché ripetuti allo stremo.
La storia di Grace è la triste storia dell’Irlanda. La storia di Grace è la triste storia del popolo irlandese. E Lynch riesce a restituire il senso di miseria, di quel marciume che mi ricorda le strade degli slum londinesi raccontati da London nel suo Popolo degli abissi, che affligge al solo pensiero che dei bimbi possano aver vissuto esperienze del genere.
Mentre scrivevo questo commento avevo nel cuore la delusione di aver letto una «bella» storia scritta in modo eccessivo. Finito di scrivere però mi rendo conto che, a prescindere dallo stile barocco, che non amo; a prescindere dagli artifici retorici molto cinematografici ma ormai abusati anche sugli schermi (il fratello Colly), la storia di Grace mi è entrata dentro, anche se raccontata in modo freddo, a volte impersonale. E questo mi fa pensare che le due stellette che volevo inserire possano risultare poco indicative del reale gradimento. Quindi ne metto tre, ma convinto che riducendo gli eccessi di stile il libro avrebbe avuto una marcia in più.

Aggiungo, dopo che la storia ha sedimentato un po' nei pensieri, che il libro poteva finire al termine del capitolo sei. Ma aggiungo anche che dopo qualche tempo le sensazioni che provo ripensando al libro sono migliori. Aggiungo una stella post, post.