Review By: Evan Waugh
Published: 2023
Genre(s): Fiction, Dystopian
Audience: 11–12, Adult
Content Warnings: Sexual assault, graphic violence, death, torture, war imagery, strong language
Goodreads Link: Prophet Song
Publisher’s Summary:
A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.
How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?
Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
Review:
In Prophet Song, Paul Lynch delivers a chilling and unsettling portrait of ordinary people caught in the tightening grip of tyranny. The story follows Eilish, whose world unravels when her husband is taken by a newly empowered authoritarian force in Ireland. What unfolds is a tense, heartbreaking exploration of fear, survival, and the fragile thread that holds families together.
Though the block-style formatting is disorienting at first, Lynch’s continuous-paragraph chapters heighten the feeling of claustrophobia and panic as society collapses. His characters are vivid and deeply human, from Eilish’s desperate attempts to protect her children to her son’s growing need to resist oppression. The gradual escalation from restricted freedoms to urban warfare is terrifying in its plausibility.
This novel lingers long after the final page. It feels urgent, unsettlingly relevant, and emotionally resonant. It is a powerful warning about the fragility of democracy and the resilience of those who fight to protect their families in the face of unimaginable darkness.
