Martial Law

 “The Prophet Song” by Paul Lynch, 2023

This is a fiction story about martial law in Ireland, mostly in Dublin.  It’s not exactly political, as there is no identified class behind the crack-down on unions, draft objectors, disloyal employees and protesters.  There are evidently right-wing ‘Party’ men from the National Alliance who have taken over the government and the Oireachtas Eireann (the parliament) lock, stock and gun barrel.  There is no other organized forces evident except a large teacher’s union, which is quickly cowed. The Irish courts, the schools, the secret police, the media, the military, the corporations – all march to the National Alliance Party’s jail-house drummer. But a vague insurrection is happening as a response, led by southern rebels coming closer to Dublin.   

At the center is a family story, of course, of a mother, Eilish, trying to hold together her 4 children, elderly father and husband in the middle of this evolving whirlpool.  It is similar to many movies about middle-class suburbanites whose whole world disintegrates after a disaster, a plague, a war, a monster, a murder.  She loses her Ph.D biology job and passport, she is shunned at the butcher, there are food and power shortages, police and military road blocks and curfews, thugs attack her car and house, her union husband is disappeared and her 17- year old son joins the resistance.  All the while she keeps thinking ‘all this will pass.’ Her addled, elderly father actually understands what is going on better than her.  She is most intent on protecting ‘normality’ and her children and there’s the rub.   

A word about the writing style.  It is almost unreadable.  There are no paragraphs but plenty of long, run-on sentences.  Dialog and description are not separated by anything so you can get lost in the text. There are attempts at lyrical passages, but their flow is disjointed and pretentious. The third person view focuses on the emotions of the mother and it’s endless. The writer poses as the brooding genius on the back cover, enjoying his Booker Prize.  But the format is no match for the story as it is.  A hint of this is in the very title Prophet Song, fronted by a quote from Ecclesiastes about ‘nothing new under the sun.’ Lynch is no Dublin Joyce, so there is that too.

As a factual story about martial law, an emergency regime or a right-wing coup, the book is excellent, as it shows what happens on a developing granular, personal level. What is left of the family hides in their house while the battles edge closer until the rebels arrive, evidently victorious.  Her suburbia returns to semi-normality, like some surreal storm has passed and it’s just a matter of clean-up and bicycles.  Eilish then tells her father that the rebels are “just as bad as the regime” so the book shows her having no clue about politics whatsoever. In a sense this is the saga of an apolitical middle-class woman - an irritating viewpoint at best.  Perhaps this is the intended demographic for this book?

The government counter-attacks with bombs and shelling of the city while the rebels pull back.  Eilish has chosen not to escape to Toronto, Canada where her sister lives with the rest of her family by using forged passports, as she is still expecting her husband and son to return.  That is her mistake. The two sides split the city and even their home is no longer safe.  They live in the developing ruins, as Dublin becomes Gaza. Eventually what remains of the family become vulnerable refugees crossing the Northern Ireland / English border and the Irish Sea, as conditions outside Ireland have oddly remained the same.

Evidently the Biblical ‘prophet’s song’ is about coming death or destruction for individual humans while the world still turns.  Deep stuff, that.  A book that hides history, politics, organization, social struggle and more, it fits the profile of aesthetic and dystopian family books.  If this sounds like your cup of Irish tea, drink up.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Ireland,” “American War” (Akkad); “Civil War” (Garland); “A Confederacy of Dunces,” “James Joyce,” “New Order / Nuevo Orden” “Democracy in Chains,” “How It Ends” (Rosenthal); “No Nobels,” “Polar Star” (MC Smith);”Parable of the Sower” (Butler). 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / October 7, 2024