Reviews - Prophet Song | The StoryGraph

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6.23k reviews for:

Prophet Song

Paul Lynch

4.11 AVERAGE

kittym130's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

kylephelps's review against another edition

5.0

Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, winner of the Booker Prize, is a profoundly unsettling novel that imagines the collapse of civil society in a near-future Ireland. Through the lens of the Stack family, Lynch crafts an intimate portrait of survival under the weight of authoritarianism, where even the most rational minds are forced to make unthinkable decisions. It is, in essence, a tale of what happens when fear takes hold and options dwindle.

The novel’s style is polarizing, to say the least. Lynch dispenses with traditional markers of dialogue, quotation marks for example, and structures his prose in breathless, unbroken sentences that offer little reprieve for the reader. This deliberate choice heightens the novel’s claustrophobic atmosphere, drawing the audience into the frenetic, panic stricken rhythms of life under siege. While some may find this approach alienating, it is undeniably effective in conveying the suffocating pressures that define the Stack family’s world.

Reading Prophet Song feels both timely and timeless, especially against the backdrop of current global uncertainties. Lynch’s depiction of societal collapse from a fascist takeover resonates in ways that are as frightening as they are plausible. I also found at times that as a parent, the novel is especially hard to read, as it confronts the wrenching sacrifices that come with protecting your children.

Ultimately, Prophet Song is less a dystopian thriller than it is a deeply human tragedy, one that lingers in the mind long after its final pages and is without a doubt, one of the saddest forms of media I’ve ever experienced. At times, this felt like a horror story but Lynch doesn’t rely on gore or spectacle to unsettle, instead the novel’s power lies in its unnerving proximity to reality. This is a horror story of the most sobering kind: one that whispers “this could happen here.”