Audiobook
Published Dec. 7, 2023 by Bolinda audio.
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 when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.
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.
A nightmare in book form. I could only read for an hour at a time.
How a contemporary western state can collapse from the perspective of an Irish middle class family.
Deserves every prize, compulsory reading.
Categorise with Atwood.
First, I love the use of language, punctuation, syntax, in this book. It took time to acclimate, but once one does it becomes a character itself. I cannot imagine this story written in a more conventional way. At least not a story as powerful.
Second, I had no idea when I finished how much I would be thinking about it a month later. Do not get me wrong, I marinated on this book for a while after finishing (and while reading, of course), but recent events have made this story much more... pointed.
This was a difficult read and I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" it (apart from the language, which is beautiful at times, and cutting at others, and so so bleak). Do not go into Prophet Song expecting a rollicking read. It hurts, it frightens, it warns. This is all my opinion, of course, and I haven't explored the …
First, I love the use of language, punctuation, syntax, in this book. It took time to acclimate, but once one does it becomes a character itself. I cannot imagine this story written in a more conventional way. At least not a story as powerful.
Second, I had no idea when I finished how much I would be thinking about it a month later. Do not get me wrong, I marinated on this book for a while after finishing (and while reading, of course), but recent events have made this story much more... pointed.
This was a difficult read and I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" it (apart from the language, which is beautiful at times, and cutting at others, and so so bleak). Do not go into Prophet Song expecting a rollicking read. It hurts, it frightens, it warns. This is all my opinion, of course, and I haven't explored the reviews of others much (if you see this, please let me know what you thought!). I am glad I read it.
A mother tries to hold her family together as her country falls to fascism and civil war. A gut punch of a book made all the more terrifying when read next to the news of our time.
