#BookReview of #Land by Maggie O’Farrell

[ About Land ]

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 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 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.

[ My Review ]

Land by Maggie O’Farrell published June 2nd with Tinder Press and is described as ‘a spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy‘.

Writing a novel of such magnitude must be an incredibly demanding feat but Maggie O’Farrell stepped up to the challenge. With Land she has written a breathtaking piece of work, one of immense scope, an epic story spanning continents and generations with its roots post famine in Ireland in 1865. The story is inspired by Maggie O’Farrell’s own great-great-grandfather who worked on the Ordnance Survey maps shortly after the Great Famine.

‘Land is about a country that has suffered a cataclysm and about a man and his family trying to find their place in its aftermath. I wanted to explore how individual lives intertwine with history and myth and landscape and how the act of mapping can mean different things to different people.’– Maggie O’Farrell

If you go for a drive along the west coast of Ireland you will see the remains of cottages that once housed families with dreams and ambitions. With only their ghosts remaining there now, much of this property is dilapidated with nature taking back the land it once owned. In 1845 the people of Ireland faced a threat to their very civilisation when potato blight took hold. Many were tenants, with very small plots, and the potato was a cheap and nutritious food that was affordable to most. The best land was used by the landlords, many absentee, for crops and animals. When the blight destroyed the crops, the country had plenty of additional food but it was not allocated to the local Irish people, with the majority being exported to Great Britain. It is estimated that over 1 million of the Irish population died during that time with up to 2 million leaving her shores, never to return again. The country was decimated. In the years following the famine, the population scrimped to survive and rebuild and it is in that time, 20 years after this catastrophic period of history, that Maggie O’Farrell sets Land.

Tomás had spent time in the workhouse during the famine but he knew life could offer him much more than that if he could just figure a way. When his ability to see buildings and land from a different perspective became evident, he found work with the mapping division of the British army – The Ordnance Survey Office in Ireland was formed to carry out the survey of the entire island of Ireland. The Office was initially part of the British army under the Ministry of Defence and was based in Mountjoy House in Phoenix Park, Dublin (Ref: https://tailte.ie/our-archives/our-history/ )

Tomás was excellent at his job. The British needed his skill alongside his ability to communicate with villagers and he also was more adept at creating suitable names for places that had a more colloquial edge, Even though sometimes it rankled with him to work with the British, he encouraged his son Liam to accompany him on these surveying trips. He hoped that one day Liam would follow in his footsteps as it was a job that provided a sufficient income for a family.

But life for Tomás and his family took a very startling turn one dark and cold day when the pair came upon a copse that had a strange air about it. Ireland’s woodlands are known to be mythical places and Maggie O’Farrell leans into this mysticism taking the reader on a remarkable, tragic, heartbreaking and sublime journey spanning centuries and generations.

A vague review I know but you do really have to trust me on this one. Land is an upsetting and unsettling read. The devastation thrust on a land and its people leaves deep scars that are forever ingrained. Many of us on this island are the progeny of a survivor of The Great Hunger. My family on both sides are from west Cork where the pure horror of the hunger endured hit hard, with rampant starvation and epidemics decimating a rural community. Reading Land felt personal. It felt special. It held me in its thrall and I was immersed in its magical pages. Seamlessly written, Land is a vast and epic tale, a masterpiece in storytelling, bringing the pain and anguish of a people to the page.

‘You will never understand how the land remembers, how deep the roots grow’

[Thank you to Hachette Ireland for a copy of Land in exchange for my honest review]

[ Bio ]