Land by Maggie O’Farrell

Reviewed by Harriet

Maggie O’Farrell’s new book has had quite a mixed reception – some high praise and some rather damning criticism. Having read it myself, which took a long time because it’s a very long book and I was away from home for a while without the opportunity to continue reading it, I can see some foundation for both those points of view. Land starts out looking as if it’s going to be one kind of book, and then quite soon shifts gear to another kind. However, there is a link between these apparently diverse approaches, so that O’Farrell winds the very intriguing events in the early chapters into the remainder of the novel, and careful reading will reveal how.

The novel is set mainly in Ireland, and the story starts in the distant past, during which the country was inhabited by pagan tribes, was sometimes invaded by Norsemen, and where violence and death were fairly normal events of everyday life. Soon, though, we fast forward to 1865, two decades after the start of the Great Irish Famine, which killed around one million people and caused two million others to emigrate. Primarily caused by a potato blight, it was exacerbated by the fact the ruling British did nothing to alleviate the suffering of the native Irish people. O’Farrell never spells this out, but the terrible childhood experiences of Tomás and his wife Phina – orphaned, and exploited in an orphanage – make painful reading. Tomás has become a cartographer, mapping his own countryside for the British Ordnance Survey, and employed partly owing to his knowledge of the Irish language, which is banned in his own country but still in use by the country people and shown in their place names. His story begins on an outing to a windswept western peninsula, during which he enters a mysterious wood and drinks from a long-forgotten well, which causes a strange transformation. Much to the terror of his ten-year-old son Liam, he emerges “a wild-haired man-creature, who is adorned with greenery. Ferns are stuffed into each of his pockets; he wears a rough-hewn crown of leaves around his head; there are rushes woven crudely about his wrists and ankles.” Moreover, Tomás is speaking in Irish, the forbidden language. A normally silent man, he becomes a visionary, full of prophetic sayings which his family find frightening and confusing. The local priest, Father Joseph, is sent for, and, delighted with the opportunity to perform an exorcism, he closets himself with Tomàs for many days, subjecting him to starvation, torture and much haranguing, all to no avail, and leaving his victim a broken man. 

This whole opening episode is clearly a bold attempt to encapsulate the sufferings of the Irish nation at the hands of the British, who have suppressed the people, their language, and their origins, and to deplore the beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. This then becomes a theme running though the rest of the novel. From here, though Tomàs is still present for many years, the narrative shifts to the lives of his children. Liam, who was being trained by his father to be a cartographer, is persuaded by Father Joseph to enter the priesthood and join a Jesuit community, which eventually takes him to Kerala in India. Enda, the oldest girl, is clever and strong, but though she would like to take Liam’s place as her father’s assistant, such an idea would never occur to Tomàs. Rose is quiet and beautiful, destined to look after the family after her mother’s death. Then there is Eugene, the youngest by a number of years. Eugene is non-verbal, but is intuitive and visionary. He is in many ways the inheritor of his father’s thwarted return to the old Irish roots, and he actually closes the novel.

After Phina’s death, the family splits apart. Liam, less and less happy with the following he has been persuaded to take, moves around the world, teaching young boys mathematics and the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Enda, unhappy and restless, manages to emigrate to Canada alone, having stolen the papers and identity of her brother. Rose, left alone with Eugene, is subjected to a horrific attack by the sons of the English Earl who owns most of the land, and Eugene’s response forces the two remaining siblings to make major changes to their lives. There’s a great deal of unhappiness, as Canada is not kind to Enda, Rose feels alone and sad, missing her siblings and finding life hard, and Liam suffers badly from doubts and privations before he finally sees the light and rebels. But the ending is moving and surprising, and brings together the theme of Irish identity and the connection with the land that has been intertwined throughout the novel. 

This, then, is a novel of myth and mystery, but it’s also a novel of anger and politics. It’s moving and lyrical, and the narrative flows from incident to incident with no clear breaks between. It’s partly based on O’Farrell’s own family history, but it also encompasses the experience of the Irish nation throughout the years. The film rights have been sold, and it will be fascinating to see how it will stand up to this treatment. 

Harriet is one the founders and a co-editor of Shiny, and is proud of her distant Irish roots.

Maggie O’Farrell, Land (Tinder Press, 2026). 978-1472289087, 400pp., hardback.

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