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wordsofclover's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Moderate: War
Minor: Death and Child death
edward_eb's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Death, Child abuse, War, Cursing, Child death, Police brutality, Confinement, Torture, and Dementia
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Murder, Medical trauma, Blood, Gun violence, Grief, Death of parent, Violence, and Trafficking
l1ndz7's review
5.0
Normally, a book with huge paragraphs and no quotation marks would have been a DNF immediately (sorry not sorry Sally Rooney) but the writing was so poetic and urgent, I couldn’t stop reading. Yes, this took me months to read but it shook me and I had to put it down and read something else at times because it was so intense.
I listened to an interview of Paul Lynch shortly after writing this and watching that solidified Paul as an auto-buy author. He said that the writing structure was intentional and was meant to keep you in the moment and not just sympathize but empathize with Eilish. He also said that this novel explores the complexity of situations like this and make you realize how hard it is to leave everything you know. Once you read this, you will no longer say when asked questions like, “would you have left immediately when the Holocaust happened?” that you would. It’s never as easy it seems trying to escape something that you’re blind to and have very little knowledge about. Paul intended this novel to “decondition” us and I think he did so brilliantly. In addition, it also explores the problem with denial and how it’s useful to have until it’s not and if you deny long enough it ends up making everything worse.
What a fantastic novel. Well done, Paul Lynch 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Graphic: Dysphoria, Murder, Grief, Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Police brutality, Child death, Genocide, and Dementia
eons_19's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: War, Kidnapping, Vomit, and Police brutality
Moderate: Trafficking
Minor: Torture and Sexual violence
imagemaps's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
Graphic: Child death, Gun violence, and War
Moderate: Police brutality
10tlgibs's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Graphic: Violence, War, and Child death
Moderate: Torture
seasonedreadings's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
Graphic: Gun violence and War
Moderate: Torture and Child death
gvstyris's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those that did not have a choice, you cannot leave when you have nowhere to go and have not the means to go there, you cannot leave when your children cannot get a passport, cannot go when your feet are rooted in the earth and to leave means tearing off your feet.
Although Prophet Song is a somewhat unconvincing dystopia, it is undeniably a hauntingly relevant chronicle of the migrant crisis. Lynch successfully flips Western apathy on its head by depicting the gradual erosion of law and order in a totalitarian Ireland; an ambitious yet admirable premise.
I struggled a lot with Lynch's stylistic choices, particularly the absence of paragraph breaks. While the stream of consciousness creates the intended tone of claustrophobia and panic, it is difficult to digest and made reading this quite a slog. I was more successful with the audiobook, although I really can't understand why it has a male narrator...?
That being said, I also think it's important to acknowledge that this book probably wasn't intended for me. I'm honestly too young to relate to Eilish's sacrifice and love for her children, and found that I learned more (about the refugee crisis and writing dystopia respectively) from As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow and The Handmaid's Tale.
Graphic: Death, Child death, and Death of parent
Moderate: Dementia, Violence, War, and Police brutality
Minor: Gun violence and Xenophobia
caillahess's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Violence, War, and Child death
Moderate: Police brutality and Torture
cklen07's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Torture and War