I expected to enjoy this book, the plot sounded intriguing, and while the story starts out strong, I had a hard time staying interested. It moved too slow and seemed at time repetitive. There were other parts I really enjoyed, I loved the characters, I loved the overall story the book is presenting, the delivery just fell a little flat for me.

I'm sorry it took me so long to read this book! But I did like it enough that I bought my own copy of it and have recommended that my library also purchase one.

This much-acclaimed Irish Famine novel just didn’t work for me, not least because I found it too long and somewhat repetitive. The lyrical, or in my view overblown, prose became tedious after a while and was on occasion hard to follow. The potentially interesting storyline – poor girl sets out to survive on her own during this worst of times – became overshadowed by just too many words, and the supernatural elements began to overshadow the brutal reality. We begin with an admittedly harrowing scene of Grace’s mother cutting off her hair, dressing her as a boy and sending her out to find work. Her subsequent picaresque adventures with the motley crew of characters she meets, and the hardships she has to contend with, are subordinated to the luscious prose detracting from the very real horror of these famine years. It’s a rather Dickensian novel overall, which is all well and good if you like Dickens, but not if you find him frequently irritating – as I do.

When I chose to request this book I thought the premise sounded pretty interesting.

However, in reading the book, the writer's style, the slow pace and the difficulty in understanding what these characters were saying had me giving up on it very early in the book.

Unfortunately, I decided that I didn't really care enough to try and "trudge - as in several feet of mud" through the book to learn about Grace's journey.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

Being familiar with this author, I knew the writing in this book would be excellent and I thought the story sounded wonderful. As it turns out, I didn't fully appreciate this book until a few weeks after I finished it. It is dense and somber and occasionally slow and I struggled to stay with it at times. Yet I haven't stopped thinking about it since I finished it and have picked it up several times to re-read certain sections of it, enjoying it much more the second time around. It really is an excellent story and I would recommend it to anyone who appreciates strong literary writing.

I decided to read "Grace" by Paul Lynch after a friend recommended the book to me. She knew that I have always been interested in the Irish Potato Famine and thought I would enjoy this book.
Grace is forced to fend for herself after her mother suddenly drags her out of bed, chops off her hair and declares that "You're the strong one now". What follows is the harrowing and often heart wrenching journey Grace takes in her struggle to survive.
The book is well written and brings to life the struggles people must have had at that horrible time in Irish history. The beauty of the novel is the lyrical prose with every sentence.
I received a copy of the book from Little, Brown, and Company via Netgalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

Faulknerian
Steinbeckian
McCarthyian
Means great prose
Great sentences
Picaresque
Unconventionally told at times
Haunting
Dreamlike
Memorable road
Memorable characters

Hypnotic and mesmerizing prose at times, haunting at times, a terrible beauty, a tragedy and journey tale of the poor and hungry with a female main protagonist Grace, will she fall from grace? in the harrowing conditions upon earth.
Grace: Tough but also tender innocence against the storm of savagery and desperation.
This author masterly evoking sense of place, scene and people.
Sheer graceful prose in Grace by Paul Lynch

I've decided this book is not really for me, but I can see that others may enjoy it. I found the slow, meandering pace of the story to be frustrating but given the plot of the story the pace fits. The setting of the book, 1845 Ireland during the potato famine, is challenging to read about and experience. In the end, it was just too depressing for me.

Set during the potato famine in Ireland during the years between 1845 and 1852, this novel tells the story of a young girl named Grace and her experiences trying to survive during desperate times. Her mother shaves her head in order for her to pass as a boy and sends her off to protect her from a man named Boggs and in hopes she can find work and avoid starvation.

Grace’s younger brother Colley decides to go along with her against his mother’s wishes. Colley doesn’t survive long after leaving home, but he stays with Grace in a ghostly way throughout her journey.

This was an intense and disheartening story, but one that is riveting. Paul Lynch managed to bring the suffering of the Irish to life in a profound way. His writing is haunting, but at times I found it was too much.

As Grace travels the Irish countryside in search of better conditions, her starvation brings her to the point of death. Reading the story, it felt as if Grace was in a continual dream-state, with much of it feeling more like a nightmare. Luckily for Grace, her story ended with a hopeful and happy future. Such was not the case for so many others in Ireland during that time.

The book does have some crude language and some violence, but for the most part it is a somber look at a very sad time in the history of Ireland.

Thank you to NetGalley & Little, Brown & Company for the opportunity to read an advanced copy and give my honest review.

It's 1845 in Ireland and the famine is full upon it's people. There is hunger,and a terrible desperation to survive. You never know what you will do to survive until you are in this situation. Ripped from her bed in the night by her mother,her hair chopped off with a knife she is told, you are the strong one now. Since she is the oldest she is forced out of her house to find work and help better her family. Grace is 14 when she is put out of her house and she faces many harsh realities as she travels by foot along the roads. She is dressed as a man for her protection and she must learn to act and walk like a man. She also takes to smoking a pipe and finds it relaxing. At times a ghostly voice presence follows her and directs her to do things that aren't always on the up and up. Grace's life was a very harsh reality and coming of age did not come easy for her.
Sometimes the arrangement of the words just didn't make sense to me and there were harsh and swear words in here that I was not pleased to read.
Pub Date 11 Jul 2017
Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for a review copy in exchange for honest review.

2 million people died in The Irish Potato Famine when blight destroyed three years of potato crops between 1845 to 1851.

In his novel Grace, Paul Lynch recreates Ireland during the famine. The writing is gorgeous, the protagonist, Grace, memorable, the descriptions of what she experiences while on the road crushing.

Think of a journey story set in a Dystopian world, such as The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Consider that the story is history, that the starvation, despair, disease, and the ever present threat of death are historical. Realize that government and the wealthy could have alleviated the suffering. It is a crushing realization of how those of means and comfort justify their selfish self-interest. Then consider the great need in the world today, in America, in your own hometown, and know that nothing has really changed. We still turn a blind eye and hold to 'truths' about self-reliance and just deserts.

Grace's mother provides a cottage for her children by an arrangement with Boggs, who visits her as payment for his largess. But as Grace nears puberty, Boggs notices the girl. One night Grace is roused and her mother shears off her hair and orders her to dress in men's clothing. The next day her mother insists she eat a rare meal of meat and orders her out of the house to find work as a man, hopefully to return with full pockets.

Confused and unwilling, Grace hangs around and is joined by her younger brother Colly. Colly instructs Grace on manliness, how to smoke a pipe to damp the hunger, and his chatter fills the void. They seek out empty huts or animal sheds for shelter, shivering in the cold. After an accident takes Colly, his voice and comments are still heard by Grace, become a part of her, and she answers back in whispers.

Grace journeys from town to town, picking up work where she can. She mimics men's behavior while noticing the swelling of her breasts. She passes through villages where the starving hawk their shreds of clothing while emaciated children stand listless. She finds herself with rough company, thieves, men who have detected her sex and follow her, and finally Bart, who becomes her protector.
"This is no way to live."
Bart and Grace travel across the country, to people and places from his past, hoping to find work, to learn there is nothing left of the Ireland he had known.

"Don't you see what is going on around you? The have-it-alls and well-to-doers who don't give a fuck what happens to the ordinary people," Bart tells Grace. "The people are living off hope. Hope is the lie they want you to believe in. It is hope that carries you along. Keeps you in your place. Keeps you down. Let me tell you something. I do not hope. I do not hope for anything in the least because to hope is to depend on others. And so I will make my own luck. I believe there are not rules anymore. We are truly on our own in all this." And at the last, "The gods have abandoned us, that's how I figure it. It is time to be your own god."

Grace is nearly dead when she is rescued, then must find the strength to escape her rescuer and return home. The book ends with Grace, age nineteen, the famine over, pregnant and living with a man she trusts, with hope for the future.

Lynch has accomplished something remarkable in this historical novel, for he not only has created a memorable protagonist and a story of growing up, not only a vivid picture of Ireland during The Great Hunger, but he has given readers a book that raises our awareness of suffering and how, in the past and in the present, every one of means who turns away is responsible.

I found this one of the most memorable novels I have read this year.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley. Firstly, I feel Grace's voice is so strong in this, I could practically hear her speaking at times. I found the way this story was told made it incredibly approachable. We walk the roads with Grace, see the sights she sees, smell the smells, etc. Even the pace of the story at times seems to have a ramble to it, as if it walks with Grace. Beyond these things, I found a few things difficult. It is a very hard tale to read considering the backdrop of the story. I would have expected nothing less considering the Famine. Nearer to the end of the tale, we get some of Colly's voice taking over the story. I had a lot of trouble reading this and keeping up with the thought process (keeping up with a dead child's thoughts shouldn't be easy I suppose). I had trouble understanding the purpose of it. Also, I feel like there were a couple of unanswered questions I would have liked the answer to. Particularly I would love to definitively know what happened to Bart. I assume he died in the night and someone found him and buried him, but I'm not sure. Overall, an interesting read.

I received this ARC from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

1800's Ireland, the country is starving so 14 yr old Grace is forced to leave her home and find work/money living off the land.

The 'poetic prose' was just blah. An interesting storyline that started out slow and continued to lose steam, I gave up at 25%.

No rating, DNF.

A profound scourge that visited upon a people and left nothing but stone upon stone.

This was the Great Famine of Ireland from 1845-1852. It carved a blackened nitch in history in which the Irish tried to scratch out an existence overshadowed by dying crops in the field and dying wee ones in their beds. It spared no one...........

Paul Lynch pulls back the curtain of his story with Sarah yanking her young fourteen year old daughter, Grace, from her bed and near scalping her of her long red locks. She forces Grace into her father's old, tattered clothes and sends her out into the countryside to look for a means of survivial in these times. "You are the strong one now."

Grace knows that her mother has been beseiged by too many mouths to feed and the visitations of Boggs, the bully who collects the rent and a bit more from Sarah. So Grace takes to the road leaving Blackmountain at the very top of Donegal in search of a way to keep herself and her family alive. "And then like light, the awareness passes and she grabs hold of her hate."

Lynch paints this storyline with the aching colors of reality. Grace, disguised as a young boy, interfaces with fellow Irish along the way who will beg, barter, sell, and near kill for the chance to live another day. Abandonment catches on every page and snags at the heart. Hope dies on once fertile branches on every tree in every townland. Those who stay put will surely die and those who take to the roads may surely die as well.

As McNutt, one of Grace's new cronies, says: "What new hell is this?"

We Irish are dipped in the descriptive and Paul Lynch never misses an opportunity to take you into the midst of an action decked out in fine prose. Please know this as you partake in this wonderfully written adventure deep in detail. You'll come across lines that deserve to be spoken out loud and more than once.

Lynch's story of Grace rivets sound to the unvoiced grief of these times. My very own McGroty family left Grace's Donegal during the famine and my O'Donnell clan from County Cork. And Lynch shines a light on the resilience and fortitude of a people facing the unspeakable. His characters nearly stare up at you from the pages. The story is raw and Grace's situations reflect the relentless pressure that knocked on every door at hours unforeseen. A remarkable story by a remarkable author.

I received a copy of Grace through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Little, Brown, and Company and to Paul Lynch for the opportunity.

“And then, for a moment, she sees her mother as someone different, thinks by seeing Sarah in the looking glass she can see her truly as she is- a woman who might once have been young and wears a glimmer of it still. The way this fifth pregnancy is graying her. And then like light the awareness passes and she grabs hold of her hate.”

Paul Lynch disturbs the reader with the shock of 14 year old Grace’s fate during the Great Famine in 1845, Ireland when the potato harvest was mysteriously destroyed by blight. Ripped from her sleep, Grace’s mother takes her to the ‘killing stump’, seeing only her shadow, believing it is the last she’ll see of her mother, she remains alive but fistfuls of her hair are in her brother’s hands. With children to feed, everyone going hungry her mother waits for Bogs (her siblings father)- Bogs who has suddenly started to hunger for beautiful young grace. In order to survive, to find work- she must venture forth as an impostor of sorts, pretending to be her own brother Colly. Her brother decides to join her, teaching her how to be ‘a man’ and shuck her femininity. Fearful as they are out on the night of the dead “Samhain” ( A Gaelic festival that celebrates end of the harvest and the start of the coldest half of the year), they know they must find refuge before the spirits find them. It is the living, though, they should fear.

When they escape the danger of Boggs yet again, they meet something worse on the river trying to pull a sheep out of the water, one that would make a delightful, much needed meal in their bellies. Trying to navigate the land riverside, angry that the pooka are playing tricks, hiding what she needs, attempting to bargain with them to no avail she catch a break. As she tries to reach her brother and help him, the river has it’s own ideas, and in a moment she is more alone than ever. But Colly’s voice is never far, and soon he is inside of her head, guiding her as she finds work with a road crew, but there are certain things about a woman that cannot remain hidden and expose her for what she is. When she ‘bleeds’ she thinks ‘for sure now I am dying. My insides are melting.” Even wonders “What if it is some disease? What if it is the old witch’s curse?”

Even among the starving men, hungry for more than just food, there is rescue. Saved from the dangerous intentions and violence of men by the ‘good hand of John Bart’ she travels all over Ireland with him as company. She should be thankful but thinks him ‘Mr. Conceited Breeches” with “eyes that permit no watcher to see into them but see through you instead.” Always walking on foot, weary, hungry “she imagines her feet like bruised fruit”. Hunger, death, criminal elements… Lynch shows us a dangerous world through Grace. That there is still hope and spiritual musings in the midst of starvation and so much death gives this novel heart. The writing is beautiful, and the language makes you feel transported into the past. For anyone that enjoys historical fiction, you will sink into Grace’s weary shoes.

Publication Date: July 11, 2017

Little, Brown & Company

4.5 Stars

The beginnings of the blight have reached their little corner of the world on Blackmountain, north of Donegal. It is the end of October, winter closing in, soon calling an end to 1845. The harvest has failed, people have taken to carrying guns for protection against thieves. The rains, floods, have barely ceased that year.

On the eve of the Samhain, the festival marking the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter, 14 year-old Grace is jolted from sleep, heaved from her bed by her mother, Sarah. She’s dragged from her room, through the doors of their home, forcing her, finally, to the killing stump. As Grace’s mind races to find some meaning for this, her mother grabs her hair in one hand, and with her other hand begins to hack it off with a knife.

”All the things you can see in a moment. She thinks, there is truth after all to Colly’s story. She thinks, the last you will see of Mam is her shadow. She thinks, take with you a memory of all this. A sob loosens from the deepest part and sings itself out.”

After, she opens her eyes to see her 12 year-old brother Colly clutching fistfuls her hair. Her mother places her hands on her seven-month swell of her own belly, saying only:

“You are the strong one now.

She watches from a distance as her mother sits on a chair outside waiting on Boggs, the man who is father to Grace’s younger siblings and to the unborn infant her mother is carrying. She sees her place Bran to her breast to nurse, but she has no milk to give.

Her mother is frightened of Boggs now, having nothing to feed her children, let alone him, and Grace knows that her mother is afraid of more, she is afraid for Grace. The way that Boggs has started to look at her.

As she begins her journey, her breasts bound and her hair shorn, wearing her father’s old clothes, her mother’s last instructions were for her to head to town, pretend to be her brother, and look for Dinny Doherty, hoping he will find her some kind of work. It isn’t long before Colly joins her, and his incessant chattering keeps Grace from feeling as much of the pain, keeps her from the grief that wants to swallow her whole. Even when he is not actually speaking, she hears his banter, knows what he would say, teaching her to speak, behave more like a man, telling a joke to lighten the mood.

Eventually she finds work on a small crew, and then another, and eventually she works her way around the country, passing as a boy, living life outside of the law when necessary. As time passes, and the death rate climbs, tempers are frayed, and life becomes almost untenable, all she can think of is returning home.

This is not your average coming-of-age story; it’s a story about love, family, and home, woven through a devastating historic era. A glimpse at the Great Famine that is so honestly portrayed and yet lovely, relaying the horror of the surroundings in gorgeous prose, bleak surroundings that still maintain an aura of hope. The ghosts that haunt us. The ghosts of those haunting Grace, haunt these pages.

While I was not aware of this until after I read this, “Grace” is the sequel to Paul Lynch’s ”Red Sky in Morning.” It is a lovely read as a stand-alone novel, although I do now plan to read ”Red Sky in Morning” because this was wonderful.

The quotes used in this review are subject to change prior to publication.

Recommended


Pub Date: 11 Jul 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

The Great Famine killed thousands in Ireland, leaving people starving and desperate. When Grace is deemed old enough, her mother tosses her out on her own, giving her men’s clothing to “keep her safe”, encouraging her daughter to forget she’s a female in a brutal world controlled by men. Followed by her little brother, the two strike out across Ireland, where Grace will have to live the lives of others, pretending to be anyone but herself. Lynch writes about one the darkest periods in Irish history like a poet in this beautiful, searing portrait of what it was like to be female in 19th century Ireland