A Fever Dream in Warped Time: ‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch
What can you say about a novel that has already received high praise from all camps — that it feels like a fever dream, that it unnerves you with its sense of warped time, that it upsets you with its matter-of-fact ‘this is what happens in a war’.
Also, that perhaps — unpopular opinion — this isn’t the best dystopian novel out there and could have packed a punch if it was shorter and more tightly wound.
Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song — written in an almost claustrophobic language that builds up tension and sustained panic — tells the story of Eilish Stack, a married woman with children and an ailing father, living in a near-future Ireland.
When Eilish’s husband is detained for trade union activity and as political tensions grow with the government becoming increasingly tyrannical, Eilish’s world begins to fall apart — piece by precious piece.
The Booker 2023 winner has its moments of genius. For instance, in this razor-sharp reminder from Eilish’s dad early in the novel, that this isn’t just a story —
They are “trying to change what you and I call reality… 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… you’re watching it happen in your own time and not in a book.”
Eilish’s father is losing his memory — moments come to him in fits and starts. In the novel, time is warped and memory is inconsistent. Coupled with all this is the sense that this has happened before, so what is Eilish’s ‘own time’? She reflects,
“This hollow feeling… this creeping sense of double time as though her life were unfolding twice along parallel paths.”
And,
“The sudden vertigo of time and yet when she opens her eyes the mirror continues to speak its truth that there is only this moment now.”
The novel has an eerie, calm-before-the-storm vibe that builds to a crescendo. A character in the novel says that “it’s going to be beautiful war” — but, of course, there is no such thing.
Prophet Song reminded me a lot of Leila by Prayaag Akbar, which, in my opinion, is a better dystopian novel. Lynch’s writing style, which many have appreciated, didn’t sit well with me — I had to put the book down twice before I decided to read it till the end.
Regardless, not all praise for Prophet Song is misplaced — it is a novel of our times (this damned time!). But a ‘work of breathtaking originality’ — as the blurb on the back of the book claims — it is not.
