How Do You Feel About A Regular Book Review?
Starting with the Booker Prize winner for 2023.
As part of my shift to a more intentional life in 2024, I've made what feels like a monumental (and challenging) decision to abstain from TV on weekdays. It has become a bad habit in our household to plop ourselves down on the couch every evening, dinner plates on our laps with the TV tuned to some half-interesting fluff. Apart from this habit being the total opposite of mindful behaviour, it's also becoming increasingly difficult to find anything that isn't dark, disturbing, or trashy. Does anyone else feel that modern TV programming is carrying a fear agenda?
To combat the zone out at dinner time, I've invested in some beautiful napkins (how old fashioned, wouldn't Oma be proud!) And I've spent many happy moments picking through our local op-shops for second-hand vases to fill with foraged flowers so we can eat our meals at a beautifully set and adorned table. And then, after a dinner, hopefully filled with conversation and connection, I will get to work on my ever-growing TBR pile.
And I thought, if I'm going to be reading more, and with most of you being such avid readers, why not review some of the standouts? Why not share the book nerdigan love? Don't we all enjoy a good book recommendation or two?
So, without further ado, I bring you my first book review of 2024, and it's a doozy: the Booker Prize Winner for 2023: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch Book Review.
The Premise:
Ireland is in the grip of a government steadily devolving into tyranny. The story follows the heartbreaking journey of Eilish Stack, a regular working mother in an ordinary Irish family slowly being torn apart as the country descends into societal collapse.
My Thoughts:
This story felt so familiar, and so it should - this is a story we see played out on our TV screens every evening. We watch the ruination of lives by totalitarian regimes with sickening regularity, all of us tucked up on our couch feeling helpless as we observe people displaced from their homes, hopeless faces marching to nowhere. But this story makes it personal. Set in a country we hold familiar with similar belief systems, similar societal norms, and similar faces, it opened my eyes to how quickly things can deteriorate and how alert we need to be to the things happening around us.
What I liked about this story
The raw honesty of it. No knight in shining armour saved the day at the last second. Prophet song told the gritty truth of a family caught in the middle of a nation descending into collapse. It answered the question we may have asked the TV screen: why didn't they leave when they had the chance?
Paul Lynch has a knack for describing human emotions and expressions in a way that feels like a revelation. His words and phrases are surprising and completely original. I often had to put the book down to play his words over in my mind. I caught myself saying, I would never have thought of it that way.
What I didn't like
In the beginning, there were so many long sentences filled with unnecessary (in my opinion) descriptive words. I found the author's prose laboured, and the first few chapters challenging to get into, but eventually, I got into the rhythm and found the story hard to put down.
What did it make me feel?
This book brought up so many emotions. I felt shame at the judgements I had made towards people trying to cross into countries illegally.
I felt anger at governments (and us) who sit back and allow regimes to treat their people with brutality. And I felt immense sorrow at how often it happens in our modern world and how immune we are becoming to the suffering we see played out on our screens day after day, week after week, month after month.
Interestingly (and frighteningly), I felt a sense of awakening to what is happening in my own nation. Secret bills are being passed by our government that affect our right to protest, and surveillance and police powers are increasing. Right now, they're small things, but from little things, big things grow.
I'm a little shame faced when I say this, but I felt a twinge of envy. Paul Lynch can write everyone, and I wish I could write like that, too.
Favourite Quotes
This one sent chills up my spine.
"You call yourself a scientist and yet you believe in rights that do not exist, the rights you speak of can not be verified, they are a fiction decreed by the state, it is up to the state to decide what it believes or does not believe according to its needs."
Haven't we seen this come into play in our nations? Don't "they" make up their own rules lately, regardless of what we think or want? Our laws are an agreement made by all of us, but it takes all of us to believe them and uphold them for our society to work. When our leadership changes its mind, those laws no longer protect us.
And this one:
"Molly says, but if you want to give war its proper name, call it entertainment, we are now TV for the rest of the world."
That bites, doesn't it?
In conclusion, Prophet Song is a story for our times and the story of our times. For me, this book was a wake-up call and call to action, an invitation to observe my passivity in a rapidly evolving world. It was also a heart-wrenching read and a chance to immerse myself in masterful writing.
My recommendation: Must Read.
Thanks for reading my friend, let me know if you’ve read this one and what you thought of it. Looking forward to many book conversations with you.
Namaste
