It might be early in the season, but I’ve already read the best book of the summer – and I won’t gatekeep. Maggie O’Farrell requires little introduction, particularly following the Oscar-winning success of Hamnet. Based on O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, the movie starred Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, who took home another Oscar for her heart wrenching performance.
Hamnet won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, among other awards, cementing O’Farrell as one of the UK’s best novelists. Alongside historical fiction, the author is known for her beloved – and ingenious – memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, which recounts her seven brushes with death. The Marriage Portrait and The Distance Between Us were similarly acclaimed, but her latest novel, Land, could well be her finest yet.
A multigenerational epic that begins with a father and son mapping the Ordnance Survey in post-famine Ireland, the novel is vast in scope. An education on the history of Ireland and a meditation on family, loss and love, Land is a masterpiece that I’m recommending to everyone this summer. If you’re looking for your next read, here’s everything you need to know.
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'Land' by Maggie O'Farrell, published by Tinder Press
Rating: 5/5
Just over a decade since the end of the Irish famine, where an estimated 1 million people died of starvation, Land begins in 1865. A father, Tomás, and his young son, Louis, are on a windswept peninsula in Ireland mapping the Ordnance Survey for the ‘redcoats’ British Army.
There, Tomás has an encounter that transforms the stoic man of few words. With the much-diminished local community believing he’s gone mad, the parish priest performs an exorcism that digs up Tomás’’ tragic past during the Great Famine that he's tried to repress. Meanwhile, his 10-year-old son must complete the mapping to appease the redcoats who will arrive any day.
What begins as small story of an Irish mapmaker, grows into a millenium-spanning history of Ireland. As much a multi-generational story of the Tomás’ family, O’Farrell’s novel is a time-hopping tale of the peninsula, from Pagans and early Nordic settlers in the ancient woodland, to colonisation, the people fighting back and Irish migration around the world.
O’Farrell often incorporates folklore, Celtic or ancient mythology, and the supernatural into her novels, from Hamnet to her children’s fable, a Boy Who Lost His Spark. I’m not an avid reader of any of these genres, but the writer’s gift is how she grounds them in reality – the family at the centre Land give the story its heart. From heartbreaking separations to joyful reunions, the novel is ultimately about the survival of both the land and its people.
Buy now £12.50, Amazon.co.uk
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