“ … 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 …”
A claustrophobic dystopian tale, "Prophet Song" makes a not-so-very strenuous leap from contemporary society into totalitarian terror. Paul Lynch's chosen setting is Dublin, but it could be so many cities and states in the current political climate.
“We are both scientists, Eilish, we belong to a tradition but tradition is nothing more than what everyone can agree on – the scientists, the teachers, the institutions, if you change ownership of the institutions than you can change ownership of the facts, you can alter the structure of belief, what is agreed upon, that is what they are doing, Eilish, it is really quite simple, the NAP is trying to change what you and I call reality, they want to muddy it like water, if you say one thing is another thing and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it as true – this is an old idea, of course, it really is nothing new, but you’re watching it happen in your own time and not in a book.”
After her husband is disappeared by the National Alliance Party (NAP), Eilish Stark gradually switches into survival mode as she must protect her four children -- ranging in age from infancy to 16 years old -- as well as her father, who is descending into dementia.
“He lifts his face and she sees the eyes of a man who has not slept and is met with pity for him, for what is known by the telling of the hands, how the man has been trained for the rules of the game but the game has been changed so what now is the man?”
“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.”
Lynch eschews punctuation to build stellar pacing and an immersive style that puts you both in front of and behind enemy lines -- if only you knew who the enemy was from day to day. The shifting perspectives and lengthy sentences drag you along almost against your will, into a foreboding new reality that is exhausting in its relentless tragedy.
“Your father is with you all the time, she says, even while he’s gone, that is the meaning of the dream, your father came home to remind you that he is always here with you because your father is always alive in your heart, he is here with you now with his arm around you, and he will always be here because the love we are given when we are loved as a child is stored forever inside us, and your father has loved you so very much, his love for you cannot be taken away nor erased, please don’t ask me to explain this, you just need to believe it is true because it is so, it is a law of the human heart.”
While some have taken issue with Lynch's stylistic approach and have alleged that the conclusion feels forced, I found both choices added to the novel's pervasive sense of anxiety, paranoia, and terror. "Prophet Song" is relentless, as bureaucratic entanglements and the profiteers lurking around every corner make family, society, and state less and less recognizable as the descent quickens.
“It is the body that breathes the mind, this is what she thinks, it is the heart that beats the man until the man is beaten and she finds herself reaching out for his hand, whispering, I never wanted you to be anybody else.”
The end result is a stunning achievement, managing to combine both sublime prose with essential reading.
“She looks for Molly’s eyes and cannot find the right words, there are no words now for what she wants to say and she looks towards the sky seeing only darkness knowing she has been at one with this darkness and that to stay would be to remain in this dark when she wants for them to live, and she touches her son’s head and she takes Molly’s hands and squeezes them as though saying she will never let go, and she says, to the sea, we must go to the sea, the sea is life.”
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