I am a fan of Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet in particular, but I have read several.
Here is the blurb …
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.
As spellbinding and various as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story of survival, for our times, and for all time.
I think this novel had a wide scope and I don’t think it all came together. Maybe it needed some of the strands removed? The story moves from ancient Ireland, to Ireland just after the Potato Blight, to Rome, to India and to Quebec. We follow Tomás, Phina and their children. There is religion (ancient and catholic), colonialisation, class, music, emigration and family relationships.
The writing is beautiful
Tomás felt his words desert him, as if they had been written in chalk and sudden rain had washed them away.
He is invaded, colonised by instant fury.
I think this would be a good movie – there is action and colour and a large cast of characters, but Hamnet is still my favourite.
