Prophet Song is eerily prophetic

Reading Paul Lynch's Prophet Song is eye-opening and thought-provoking. Written in 2023, the book is a fictional but plausible dystopic account of Ireland sinking into the depths of fascism and totalitarianism. It seems today, just three years later, remarkably prescient, not so much of present-day Ireland, which still enjoys a robust and resolute democracy as far as I know, but of the situation in the USA.

Granted, the fascist state that Lynch describes is much more extreme, in the same way that Margaret Atwood's Gilead portrayed an eerily familiar, but more severe, USA-gone-wrong. But the parallels are arresting, and Lynch's account of the way in which such an unthinkable situation can materialize by stealth, with a heedless population sleepwalking into the unimaginable, is chilling indeed.

The book, which won the 2023 Booker Prize, is written in a distinctive and idiosyncratic style, with very few paragraph breaks, minimal punctuation in general, some interesting vocabulary choices and word orderings, and some unexpected figures of speech. The text lurches giddily from earthy Irish vernacular to blank verse poetry; the juxtapositions are striking.

Here are just a few snippets:

The winter rain falls lush and cold, the passing days held numb within the rain so that it seems to mask time's passing, each day giving to faceless day until the winter is at full bloom.

The head on you, Larry says, I could pass you on the street and hardly know you. Anybody else but Dad want coffee? Mark says.

She turns watching the faces that surround her, faces pained with the vertigo of staring into the sudden abyss, all of these people the very same, every one of them clothed yet naked, sullied and pure, proud and shameful, disloyal and faithful, all of them brought here by love.

She lies in the dark walking blind alleys of thought, she thinks she sleeps then wakes into a dark room watched by whispering faces finding herself judged.

It takes a little to get into the cadence and the style of Lynch's writing, but once you do, this is a very rewarding book.