*History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those who 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.*

Prophet Song is a story about a family, primarily focusing on Eilish, a woman who is a scientist and microbiologist, and her struggle to protect her four children as the government gradually falls under totalitarian control. Her husband Larry, an union trade teacher goes “missing” in one of the protests and she is left to care for her four children and dementing father.

One often wonders when a country undergoes a collapse that it cannot happen. Citizens try to cling to the belief that a country as civilized as theirs cannot really go through such a terrifying change in just a few months. After all, one might wonder, who will support such a change? And yet, the truth is even more horrifying than most would think. The people who did it are your own - your neighbors, your colleagues, someone you knew dearly.

*These are the nameless who have brought the present into being, yet what she sees are faces the same as her own, faces that pass by as ever in this city as it breathes the ceaseless exhalations of night into day.*

Even when it is evident that your country is in a state of chaos and mismanagement, you may not want to believe it. This is because accepting such a reality means leaving behind an uninhabitable and cruel world for your children. As a parent, I know one thing for sure: no parent dreads anything more than such unfortunate turns of events.

*when the yard is past there will remain the world’s insistence, the world insisting it is not a dream and yet to the looker there is no escaping the dream and the price of life that is suffering, and she sees her children delivered into a world of devotion and love and sees them damned to a world of terror, wishing for such a world to end, wishing for the world its destruction, and she looks at her infant son, this child who remains an innocent and she sees how she has fallen afoul of her-self and grows aghast, seeing that out of terror comes pity and out of pity comes love and out of love the world can be redeemed again, and she can see that the world does not end, that it is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event, that what ends is your life and only your life, that what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time, the coming of the sword, the world devoured by fire, the sun gone down into the earth at noon and the world cast in darkness, the fury of some god incarnate in the mouth of the prophet raging at the wickedness that will be cast out of sight, and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,*

"The Prophet Song" becomes even more poignant as set in Ireland, unlike in other volatile countries where such a scenario might be more believable. Ireland, with its democratically elected government, adds an element of surprise to the situation. The chaotic decline of a once powerful democracy into an authoritarian regime creates an unsettling and alarming backdrop.

Eilish's struggle, described in an urgent present-tense narration, is set against a growing insurgency that plunges Ireland into a civil war. This war drags her family into the intense fighting between government and rebel forces. Everything is taking toll on her family and peace and harmony is lost to the collapsing world.

*War shapes itself around them, gunfire that sounds like pneumatic drilling, shelling that drums the earth and sends shudders into the house, the windows and the wooden floors rattling.*

The "Prophet Song" is written with an unconventional structure. It features long sentences, omits paragraphs, and lacks dialogue marks. This unconventional style presents challenges in understanding certain aspects. It becomes unclear who is speaking and whether the words are actually spoken or not. Furthermore, the abrupt scene changes causes confusion and disrupts the narrative.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. Although it becomes slow at times, it is powerful and exhilarating. It keeps the reader engaged and successfully creates a sense of claustrophobia and horror throughout.

Thank you Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange of an honest review.

Star rating : 3.5 stars

This is a book I never wanted to come back to, yet found myself impressed by it when I did. To be totally honest, I think I started reading this at exactly the wrong time when the world itself felt too bleak, so reading this was just too much for me.
The writing is quite beautiful and once you get a hang of the rhythm it is very engaging. It read like poetry but also like a panicky stream of consciousness that felt natural for the content of this book.
I never quite felt engaged with the characters and often forgot who was who. The plot felt very realistic and the way the characters responded made sense, but I almost wish we got a better sense of who they were before this nightmare descent into fascism.
This is a dystopian book that deserves to be on the Booker list, it is well written and very compelling. However, I can’t say I totally loved it, maybe because it was too much at the wrong time, maybe because there just wasn’t enough there to keep me interested in reading. Real life is dystopian enough, especially for people outside of the Western world, and I just couldn’t stay engaged enough in a fictional story.
Thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

Modern Ireland, but a darker country than before. The Gardaí have been given emergency powers and have rounded up supposed revolutionaries. One of them being Eilish's husband, Larry, a senior trade unionist, who has since disappeared while in custody. Eilish struggles to maintain a semblance of normality with her children and her dementia suffering father but she is determined to find out what exactly has happened to Larry and the dozens of others who have been arrested by the newly formed Garda National Services Bureau and subsequently gone missing.

Law & order begin to gradually break down and yet family life continues. A dark tale with a perhaps inevitable ending.

A sombre, stark, and dismal tale riven with foreboding and dystopian implications.

It was well-written but it took me an age to adapt to the author’s style (I’m not certain I ever fully embraced it). It took me longer still to have empathy or a connection with the characters. On the contrary, they often left me with a tangible sense of irritation and anger at their decision-making and naivete.

An interesting premise yet at times it felt oversimplified and lacked legitimacy, and substance. The ending was better than everything preceding it. Overall, I found it a challenging read and fought against every instinct to complete it.

Clearly, it wasn’t my cup of tea - despite the stellar blurb, despite the legions of 5-star reviewers, despite my love of dystopian classics.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for granting the e-ARC in exchange for a review.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch paints a grim picture of the reality that, unfortunately, many people still face or have faced in the recent path. When the powers that be start disappearing your family, do you hold on to hope or flee to save the remainder?

One of the things that struck me most throughout the story was the simple question: Why? Why in the world was this even happening in the first place? Although it could be gleaned that the reason was control of the people, there is no real answer given by the end of the story. This, and the language Lynch uses (Often, I believe, embellishing common English words, although I am not exactly sure how people speak in Ireland.) and the atmosphere that it creates, was what was so haunting. Although it is set in modern day, it feels a bit misplaced, like we’ve stepped into an alternate reality.

The characters themselves were not fully fleshed out either (one or two exceptions here). They were mostly only given names, jobs, and other family members to attach to them. Despite this, I still cared about what would happen to the Stack family, their neighbors, and their fellow countrymen because, well, this story could be about any of us.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the ending (although nothing will ever compare to the ending of ‘A Farewell to Arms’). But this was also a choice, which I can respect the author for. Without giving anything away, Lynch was making a serious statement with how he ended his novel, which you will have to read for yourself.

3.5

I've thought long and hard about this book. I really wanted to like it because friends had all given it 5 stars and raved about it.

However I just couldn't engage with it at all. To begin with I never really understood what the original emergency was that led to the authorities turning tyrannical. Was there a war? A national crisis? Someone just got greedy?

The second problem for me was Eilis. She behaved like no mother I know. She put her husband's disappearance ahead of her children and continued to do so almost until the end. I found it totally unbelievable. Then there's the way she deals with the increasing military presence and curfew. She seems to consider that emergency supplies consist of chocolate and cigarettes.

Other things that bothered me was the substitution of "party types" into a very specific scientific role. Don't get me wrong I am fully aware that Ireland is crammed with extremely highly educated people but to find another scientist (or a lot of them) within such a short space of time felt unrealistic.

The only parts that felt realistic was Eilis' reaction to her father's increasing confusion and the way she deals with Bailey.

I recently read a book by a real refugee traveling from Africa and what he went through was much more harrowing. It felt like Paul Lynch wanted to go so far but no further - the scenes with Molly at the border come to mind.

The actual style I found a little irritating - was it a poem or prose?

I feel bad about not liking the book but it was simply unrelenting misery - even the weather was bad every day. Perhaps I'd built the book up too much in my mind? Perhaps I expected too much from a fictional account.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance review copy ahead of the paperback release.

Prophet Song is on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, so I wanted to read. Paul Lynch portrays a not-so inconceivable Ireland that has been taken over by an authoritarian government. The book begins with two agents stopping by Eilish's house, wanting to speak with her husband who is a leader in the trade union. Her husband is eventually taken into custody and she has no contact with him, while she tries to keep her four children safe and calm. The situation gets worse and her eldest son leaves to join the rebels. The book follow her attempt to protect her children and her father who is becoming more affected by dementia as the country devolves into chaos and violence, with more and more restrictions being placed on those who have stayed. Because this book is so bleak, it was difficult for me to appreciate the writing because I sort of just wanted to crawl away from it. There is no reprieve and Eilish has no real good decisions. The reader needs to be in the right headspace for a book like this. These dystopian novels are a challenge to read these days considering the rise of authoritarianism in the world.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

Without doubt, this is the easiest 5-star review I've given all year: Prophet Song is an absolute, outright masterpiece, undoubtedly a classic-in-the-making - an unsettling, forceful, and (although I often roll my eyes at this word) *timely* piece of fiction, one which seems to resound with the troubling chime of truth.

Set in a kind of alternate, dystopian Ireland (although one which appears not too distant from that of our present), Lynch's prose unfurls in a relentless stream, a stylistic choice which might at first feel confusing or unpolished - there are no speech marks, for example, and paragraph breaks are few and far between - but is in fact a fitting form for the narrative itself. This kind of tyranny does not come to be quickly or cleanly; it is not plain to see until it is far too late, until the freedoms that once seemed so secure have long been snatched away. Like a prolonged episode of sleep paralysis, the family at the centre of this story find themselves frozen in the dark, able only to watch as wickedness pricks it thumbs and steals its way towards them; 'history is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave' writes Lynch, as a relative pleads with Eilish (the mother, wife, and main protagonist of the novel) to flee, quite early in the conflict, but even then, perhaps, it might have been much too late.

As lyrical as it is listless, at times almost detached; as tender as it is unflinching, what Prophet Song offers is a stark reminder of a grim reality: the wars we watch unfold from the comfort of our homes, the visions of terror we scroll through, mindlessly, on our morning commutes, or flick past in the newspaper are not as far flung as they may seem; this novel is a mirror, and objects in mirror are often closer than they appear.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this ARC ebook!

This is a tremendous and important book. While I initially had issues with the way in which Mr. Lynch punctuates dialogue, I completely understood the rationale for it as I progressed through the novel. It would be so easy to do a novel like this badly, but Lynch does an excellent job depicting the humanity and relatability of his characters. It is ultimately a heart-breaking bur significant novel. I loved it and have recommended it to several friends.

A fictional dystopian past for Ireland that isn't quite clear that it's fictional, given that most readers outside of Ireland won't know the history of that country. Anyhoo, premise sounded intriguing - until you realise it's mostly about a wife/mother fretting, day in, day out. So boring. Couple that with flat prose and nothing really being said and you've got one helluva weak novel. Dull stuff - couldn't finish.

Few books I have read have overwhelmed me with as much dread and despair. As pages turn the knot in my stomach grew and grew until my entire chest was bursting with uneasiness. Again proving the power of the novel, Paul Lynch transports the desperation and terror of a tyrannical government clamping down on its citizens out of third-world countries and takes the narrative to a modern Ireland. We watch as survivors of terror flee their embattled country and the book deeply resonates with empathy for emigrants just trying to find a safer place to live.

Eilish Stack is our protagonist in this modern-day dystopia and we wallow in despair with her as she is forced to make impossible decisions over and over again. Her husband has been disappeared, her father is deep in the throes of dementia, and her eldest son is about to graduate into a medical studies before life is upended and he is forced on the run. Back at home, Eilish must watch over Molly, Bailey, and Ben, who is only a toddler and forced into this horror. As her world dissolves around her, Eilish will find out that what sacrifices she is willing to make, and learn whether or not she is even capable of making those decisions. A heart-breaking and brutal read.

If I've learned anything in all my years of reading, it's that Irish authors have a way of reaching out into the depths and pulling forward the most compelling, painfully articulate narratives about our existence as human beings on planet earth.

I was unacquainted with Lynch's writing prior to being granted the ARC for Prophet Song, but I was compelled by the synopsis. We find ourselves in Dublin, amidst a right-wing backlash and insurgent totalitarian government. Our main character Eilish, is forced to navigate a series of impossible decisions after her husband disappears during a demonstration. Eilish's father is succumbing to dementia and she is tasked with taking care of him as well as her four children on her own.

There is a lot going on stylistically her that really makes you feel as if you're in Eilish's shoes. I don't typically enjoy prose that plays with form, and I tend to lean away from writing without breaks but everything Lynch does here feels important and necessary to the narrative.

I will be thinking of this story for weeks and months to come.

<b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE</b>
4.5, rounded slightly down. I could not stop reading this over two days, and its shocking images of violence and torture lingered in my mind and disturbed my sleep. This was immersive kitchen-sink realism, but also chillingly horrifying and relentlessly tense.

Lynch creates empathy for survivors of state terror and civil war by transplanting the horrors of Syria and Yemen to a quiet upper-middle-class street in contemporary Dublin, where the casualties and survivors are people like us. All of the exposition occurs in passing conversations between characters, but the outlines are vividly clear: a democratically elected far-right ethnonationalist regime has abolished civil rights, disappeared dissident elements, and massacred peaceful demonstrators, silencing civil society and infiltrating schools and workplaces. An organized resistance movement mounts a stalled offensive against the regime, turning the divided city into an active warzone, pounded with airstrikes and patrolled by paramilitaries.

Eilish, a 40ish microbiologist working in biotech, is raising four children with her trade unionist husband Larry, and taking care of her increasingly demented father. Aware of the increasingly perilous political situation but tied down by family obligations, she misses multiple opportunities to flee with her family while she still had a chance. As her husband is disappeared after a protest march and her teenaged son leaves to join the resistance, Eilish goes to increasingly heroic and horrific lengths to hold her family together through escalating violence and unimaginable trauma.

<i>Thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.</i>

Courageous, deeply disturbing, and chillingly representative of contemporary times, Paul Lynch’s Dystopia makes for a tumultuous read. Prophet Song with shades of 1984 and The Road punctuating its pages, is set in the modern Republic of Ireland, which unfortunately finds itself in the malevolent grip of a totalitarian regime. The repressive establishment is the result of the National Alliance Party (NAP) taking control of the nation and putting paid to civil liberties and constitutional rights of its citizens. Emergency legislations are passed bestowing untrammeled powers to the Garda Síochána and to an outfit called the Garda National Services Bureau (GNSB) – basically the Irish answer to the Statsi.

The protagonist in Lynch’s story is Eilish Stack, a microbiologist, a mother of four and wife to Larry Stack, the deputy secretary general in the Teacher’s Union of Ireland. On a bleak and wintry night, two GNSB personnel manifest themselves at the doorstep of Eilish’s house looking for Larry. Within a few days following a teacher’s march, Larry disappears into thin air, vanishing without a trace.

The whole might of the GNSB and the NAP is felt by Eilish in incremental doses of agony. While futilely petitioning the government for the release of her husband, Eilish is also required to tend to her aging father who requires constant care due to a combination of a degenerating memory and an obstinacy to live all by himself. Despite his deteriorating mental condition, Eilish’s father wisely counsels her to depart the country with her children in tow to the safer confines of Canada where Eilish’s sister Áine is a citizen. Eilish however pays scant regard to such advise still hopeful of her husband’s return.

Things come to a heated stand when a rebel insurrection movement takes root and Ireland is racked by an internal civil war. Military aircrafts scream across the sky depositing remorseless missiles at rebel strongholds while a constant state of surveillance identifies rebel supporters before whisking the unfortunates away, first to unknown centres of detention, and ultimately the morgue. Mark, the seventeen-year-old first son of Eilish soon enlists himself in the rebel cause, much to the chagrin of Eilish and goes incommunicado.

Áine keeps imploring Eilish to join her in Canada. “History is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave,” Áine reminds her stubborn sibling. Even as rations run out and the electricity is completely disrupted, Eilish resolutely sticks to her guns and stays put in a positively dangerous and frightening atmosphere.

Lynch’s Eilish is one of those millions of helpless, harried, and hapless individuals whose predicament is broadcast to us through the lens of a vulturine media which for the sole and dastardly purpose of embellishing its TRP ratings is more than delighted to desensitize the feelings of the oppressed. From the fortunate comforts of our living rooms, we are provided a sneak peek at nauseatingly regular intervals of myriad atrocities being committed in various corners of the globe. Ceausescu, Pol Pot, Rafael Videla etc have all resorted to unspeakable horrors in systematically ripping out the heart of the social fabric in their respective nations.

The fact that Prophet Song does not contain any paragraph breaks means that sentences that are virtually jeremiads sometimes run the entire length of a page. There is a conscious and deliberate absence of speech marks for dialogues and speakers are not provided a new line. Such fragmentation makes the narrative even more eerie and elegiac.

Eilish battles both external circumstances and internal demons as she engages in a fierce and unforgiven fight to protect her family. Her undying love for her children is forced to undergo involuntary stress tests as her own offspring question her decisions and thoughts. The reader is at times driven to the edge of exasperation as she almost flings the book at the closest wall yelling “can’t you see Eilish that it is in the best interests of the family to pay heed to what your own father and Áine are imploring you to do?” But then again if she was to be so compliant, she wouldn’t be Eilish, and the world wouldn’t have its Prophet’s Song.

At the time of this review Prophet Song has slid itself into the shortlist for the Booker Prize 2023. It took Lynch four long years to write it. In his own words, “Four long years it took to write, through pandemic and normality, through Long Covid and health. My son, Elliot, was born just before I began to write, and by the end, he was riding a bike.”

I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if the Lynch was to progress from being a shortlisted author to the fifth Irish writer to have won the Booker, on the 26th of November 2023. Best wishes to him and the book!

Prophet Song is published by Grove Atlantic and would be available for purchase beginning 12 December 2023.

Thank You Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy!

The Prophet Song for me read like a novel where the style overpowered the idea. And that only really works when you like the style. I categorically did not care for it. The author writes like he’s never met a space of the page he didn’t want to cover in words. It’s all one endless paragraph after another, flowing into a narrative so dense and chewy, it tends to distract from the plot.
And okay, objectively, I kind of see why he might have done it: it does create for a certain kind of harrowing urgency that reflects what the characters are going through in the dystopian Ireland he has created. And the writing itself is actually very good, descriptive, emotive, etc. But it’s just too overdone. Didn’t work for me. User mileage may vary.
Definitely a divisive sort of novel, the kind readers will either love or hate. Critics will likely love it. It was already shortlisted for Booker. Basically, if the first few pages work for you, the rest of the novel likely will too. Me, I was just being a stubborn completist about it. To be fair, it read fairly quickly for its size, but failed to wow. Thanks Netgalley.

I had high hopes for this, but unfortunately didn't feel any of the unbearable tension others were so gripped by... I am not sure why...

It could very well be the criticism that some GR-friends raised: just placing a fascist regime in 21st century Western Europe doesn't all of a sudden make it worse or eye-opening. I happened to be watching the excellent BBC documentary 'Once Upon A Time in Northern Ireland' in parallel and the testimonies of the families of the disappeared were so powerful that the book just pales in comparison.

But it was also much too slow for me - very little happens in the long middle section of this book. I guess the idea is to build up tension, but if you don't feel it then that doesn't work. The writing is good, but a little too obviously effect-driven.

2,5

I'd like to express my gratitude to the publishers for providing me with a copy of "Prophet Song," a Booker Prize shortlisted novel. They granted me access when since I came back at NetGalley, I started with a blank slate in terms of statistics.. In this review, I'll highlight both the positive and negative aspects of the book. I won't focus on the plot, since it's been done in many reviews and YouTube videos.

"Prophet Song" is undeniably a beautifully written novel, that aligns with its Booker Prize nomination. The prose captures an atmospheric quality, immersing readers in a foreboding ambiance. The evocative language and the book's ability to set a haunting tone are noteworthy.

However, despite that, I found it challenging to connect with the characters, particularly the main character, Eilish. Throughout the narrative, even during her most trying experiences, I felt a notable detachment, like an observer rather than a participant in her journey. This lack of emotional connection impacted my overall engagement with the story. Additionally, I couldn't help but notice similarities to other Booker Prize-nominated works with a similar theme. In comparison, those other books executed the theme more effectively, which somewhat diminished my enthusiasm for "Prophet Song."

In conclusion, my assessment of "Prophet Song" leans towards average primarily due to my personal reading experience. Nevertheless, I acknowledge the book's recognition on the Booker Prize shortlist, I am sure it's there for a reason.

Thank you once again to the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read and review "Prophet Song."

“the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news.”

“She whispers to him though there are no words for a child this age, no explanation for what has been done and yet what the child will never recall from memory will always be known by him and he will carry it as poison in the blood.”

From: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Booker longlist (and now shortlist) #10 aka
Booker Paul #3

I am sure most people know that this is the frightening tale of a dystopian Ireland, where the government, after some crisis (not further specified), has passed an act that gives the Garda extended powers, leading to countless vanishings of ordinary citizens and basically turning Ireland into a Fascist state.

And this transformation, the crumbling of society with an acceleration of terrifying events, is happening while you read. It is a propulsive read, even though the story is told entirely from the perspective of one woman and her family, but this oppressive, claustrophobic interiority makes is so apt for the horrible situation they’re in. The way Lynch is able to portray and make you physically feel that atmosphere of tension and despair, is very admirable.

I did feel that after a while it fell a little flat. Yes there is a, many commented on, very sad and pivotal moment in the book, but many of the events leading up to it, felt a little contrived. I also got annoyed with the many times Lynch feels the need to literally mention, or let a character point out, that it’s hard to know when to leave in a situation like that (the most quoted line from this book is only one of its many examples).

I do think it was an interesting way of showing the reader that yes it can happen to you too - and I won’t deny that it captivated me - but somehow the fact that it was dystopian with events actually happening in the world today, made me uneasy and I think that the numerous examples of novels or memoirs about the struggles of refugees from totalitarian regimes with actual events can be more powerful.

Thank you @netgalley and @groveatlantic for the eARC!
📚 📖💙

#ProphetSong by #PaulLynch
(Photo borrowed with permission from @thebookerprizes #thebookerprizes thank you thank you!)
It isn’t very often that a book truly instills me to the core with a sense of personal horror… but this one did… in an amazingly immersive tale, Paul Lynch took me to Bonny Ireland, the place where I imagine green rolling hills, dramatic cliff sides, homey pubs with smiling half-pissed Irishmen who welcome me & mine for a friendly pint…and takes this and makes it a place of paranoia, desperation, fear, anguish, and claustrophobia… to name a few. It definitely was a cautionary tale of how your country is only your country for as long as it’s people in power decide that you are it’s citizen. It reminded me so much of how people describe the beginnings of Nazi Germany, and how the Jewish people (too many) stayed and figured it would all blow over (not soon enough). It is a story of Ireland becoming like a fascist or police state, whatever you want to call it, it was a freakin nightmare. One in which a simple opinion or relative could turn you into an enemy of the state. One in which you no longer have of the rights, freedoms, or privileges you assume as a citizen. This story chilled me, and made me extremely anxious. It propelled me through with from beginning to end and on top of it having sentences that were surreal and poetic as well! This is amazing writing, I am definitely 💯 propping this up as my personal vote for #winnerofthebookerprize !
@groveatlantic and @netgalley thank you SO much for providing this e-arc for review, I’ve already preordered it and will do another post when I have the actual book in my hands. I recommend everyone read this book and remember that this is one of the places that extremist attitudes can take us! #allHopes against this although I’m sure someone is experiencing this somewhere in the world, may it cease forever!
#lovethyneighbor #anxietyread #cautionarytale #bookreview #bookerbook #favoritereads

As I began reading this novel I thought, I will like this book. I like the family. I like the writing. A nice Irish family, father a teacher, involved in the teachers union. Mother a scientist. A boy and daughter in high school, another preteen son, and the baby. A father, living alone, becoming senile.

First, there is some trouble with the state about the union. They have the right, father says. People begin to disappear. The National Guard becomes the new law. The father disappears. The family is targeted. The teenage boy is called up for national service. The daughter is angry, depressed, withdrawn. The preteen boy wets the bed. The mother is left trying to keep the family together, loses her position. The water is brown. Food is scarce. The son joins the resistance. War envelopes the country, the town, the neighborhood. The younger son is wounded.

No country comes to their aid. People become refugees, paying exorbitant costs to be secreted out of the country.

It is terrifying, reading this progression from freedom to fear.

The long sentences, the lack of quotations and paragraph breaks propelled my reading, the story rushing at me like a freight train I could not get off if I wanted to, the sickening, increasing awareness of the horror described too real, too possible, enmeshed in this nightmare that disturbed my dreams. There was no let up, every catastrophe followed by new loss, every hope crushed.

These people did not believe it could happen there, in a land of law, then watched it happen. It happened before and will happen again. And that is what is truly terrifying.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.