Prophet Song

The world goes to hell in a handcart, so I retreat to my warm cocoon, watch documentaries and mubi films, listen to music, and read library books. And just at the moment, there’s some stunning stuff around. The blurb for Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song”, for instance, describes the creation of a future dystopia similar to the work of Orwell, Burgess and Attwood.

Which is plainly ludicrous. Except that it’s not. This contemporary novel about how ordinary life in Ireland sinks into an authoritarian nightmare is totally believable. As I read, I can see how little it would take for us to become former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, wherever. the pieces are all in place, and the crude, powerful oversimplifications which drive violence and repression are on the news every day.

It’s deeply domestic. A mother, trying to bring up four kids on her own, when she doesn’t know what’s happened to her husband. The pressures of surviving day to day, of feeding, keeping clean, staying safe, when bit by bit all the things which keep us sane are being wrenched away. Lynch puts us in that position, makes us care, as we long for this family to get away - but all the time we know that it would be ludicrous to expect a happy ending.