I was surprised to see this was categorized as "historical fiction" because it takes place in 1996, but I liked it. The story is based on a myth, and I love anything myth/folklore related. I felt like the book picked up as it went and I really enjoyed it.

I imagined this novel to be a mystery focusing on Sol's death... That and the cover are what initially caught my attention. Unfortunately, the mystery took the 3rd row seat to rural family dynamics and society drama. While the world building regarding rural Ireland in the 1990s and the spread of BSE was solid and I enjoyed that about the read, it was such a slow moving story. I wish the Butchers played a more crucial part of the novel, well crucial is the wrong word because they are definitely crucial, but dominant may be the word I'm searching for to describe what I expected. We hear about the Butchers throughout the story but wouldn't it have been great to follow them and get to know them as we learned about the other characters? In my opinion, they were the more interesting characters of this story and they could have used some chapters of their own. I like the prose, the writing style, the layers of folklore and I like rural settings but the execution fell somewhat short for me in regards to my expectations which fail me from time to time... But let me say this without spoiling anything... The end made it worth finishing and brought me from 2.5 to 3 stars
[Thank you NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the free eARC]

This year I've spent a lot of time reading literature from Ireland (more often from The Republic of Ireland), and it's been an incredible journey! So it only felt natural to request Ruth Gilligan's novel "The Butcher's Blessing". The novel started off slowly for me. However, that wasn't the fault of the story; I wasn't giving it my full attention.

Gilligan's novel is told from multiple perspectives. My only complaint about the multiple POVs is that sometimes I wanted to read more from a specific character's perspective. I found myself really enjoying the bildungsroman storylines from Davey and Úna. Since I'm not usually interested in coming-of-age stories, this was a pleasant surprise for me! I thoroughly enjoyed Davey and Úna's determination and unwillingness to conform to gender norms.

One of the other aspects of the novel that I found engrossing was the relationships that the characters had with each other. They're deep, messy and complex. Set against the backdrop of actual events that happened in Ireland (thank goodness I'd done some more research on Irish history!), I felt that the characters were of a place and time that are still alive in the Irish psyche today. While visiting Ireland, you could see, hear and feel remnants of certain moments in history. It's interesting how Gilligan captures the paradox of Ireland's modernity as it exists inside of a staunch mindset that permeates an unwillingness to change...Although, as we're seeing (globally), this isn't only the case in Ireland.

I found myself lost in Gilligan's storytelling and have plans to read more from her backlist in the near future, because the connection to place and land in her novel was so poignant in comparison to other novels I've read but haven't felt a connection to (with the exception of both Kevin Barry's "Night Boat to Tangier" and Dorothy Macardle's "Dark Enchantment").

I would highly recommend Ruth Gilligan's "The Butcher's Blessing" to book lovers of Irish literature, bildungsroman stories or those who love to get lost in a tangle of love, loss and hope.

Many thanks to Tin House Books for kindly letting me read and review an ARC of Gilligan's novel.

Sometimes a cover catches your attention and you need to read that book. That was The Butcher's Blessing for me; the title and cover are stunning, and the blurb was intriguing. I couldn't wait to read this one.

Set in both 1996 and 2018 Ireland, The Butcher's Blessing is told in alternating points of view spanning the last run of The Butchers, a group of men who adhere to the "old ways" of butchering, traveling the country for close to a year, performing their services based on rituals and customs passed down from one generation to the next. Una wants nothing more than to be a Butcher. Gra, her mother, struggles with her place as a Butcher's wife and questions whether this is all life has to offer to her. Fionn takes up prohibited practices in order to care for his sick wife and son. Davey. is in his last year of studies and questions what comes next. And mixed in, we meet Ronan, a photographer interested in The Butchers and making a name for himself in the photography world.

I loved everything about this book. Ireland will always have a special place in my heart, and I couldn't get enough of the intricacies of everyday life in the 90s--the politics, the school etiquette, family dynamics, farm life vs "big city living." Gilligan did a wonderful job painting the conflicts between Northern and the Republic, and it served as a wonderful backdrop to the concentration on The Butchers.

There's a lot going on here but it's never overwhelming. Each character is given history and internal problems that on the surface, shouldn't relate to one another but end up being woven together in a beautifully-intricate coming-of-age tale. Una is perhaps the stand-out character for me. On the brink of becoming a woman, Una is acutely aware of peers' perception of her, society's perception of her, and her family's perception of her. She wants to be a Butcher, but the harsh reality of the situation, that no Butcher has ever been a woman, makes her fiercely frustrated, disappointed, and motivated to change course. Indeed, her identity is wrapped up in her goals rather than gender constructs, a radical ideation in a country steadfast in tradition, and in these moments, she's able to explore what it means to be a woman, a wife, a girl, and an aging man stoic in the old ways--given power out of habit rather than fulfilling a full potential. This parallels well with Davey's plot, exploring his sexuality in an openly homophobic community, and in these two characters rests the future.

So while this is a coming-of-age tale, it's also one of transition: respecting the past but embracing the future. Not choosing one or the other, but creating something new. In this respect, too, I appreciated the discussion of oral tradition. I've always been fascinated by tales that started as word of mouth and transitioned into written word, and Gilligan's focus on storytelling, mythology, and photography worked really well as a metaphor for this fluidity of language and history.

Overall, The Butcher's Blessing is an engrossing, lyrical, thrilling read with raw honesty and insightful commentary on change. This is one I'll definitely be re-reading, and in my humble opinion, a 2020 must-read.

Big thanks to Tin House and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

Less a mystery than an exploration of what is lost/gained in the face of Globalism, "The Butcher's Blessing" gives a tremendous sense of time and place: that of rural Ireland in 1996. It's the height of the BSE (Mad Cow) crisis, the Troubles are winding down across the border, and Ireland is just beginning to take steps towards modernity – a McDonald's opens, homosexuality is decriminalized, etc. Ancient Irish traditions and folklore are becoming suspect, crude, passé, ridiculed, or slyly integrated into contemporary life, and we follow four perspectives, a mother and daughter, a father and son, each generation influenced by the rituals and behavior of the previous.

While I think the novel is successful in tackling these changing Irish norms, particularly when switching character POVs and understanding parent/child relationships, I felt that the book fails to fully exploit the premise of its central mystery. The how and why questions surrounding the dead butcher do not build (or really get answered), so much as sit there sucking up oxygen. And so much of what we learn is second-hand, it feels like this novel was much more interested in how characters react to changing times than how they react to a murder. I think I just desired a much stronger mystery – with a very clear solution – and was disappointed that this was not that.