What readers think of Land, plus links to write your own review.

“… the cragged cliffs that fall off into the pounding sea: a geometric shape moving among grand and yielding irregularities. How radiant, how lovely is the land – and yet how empty. It is as if he has passed through a rent into another realm where humans are unknown, where he is the only one, and will have to make the best of it.”

Land is the tenth novel by award-winning, bestselling Irish author, Maggie O’Farrell. The peninsula juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and has been the site of invasion, famine, destructive storms. In 1865, it’s where ten-year-old Liam reluctantly aids his father, Tomas, employed by the redcoats to draft accurate maps. Tomas sends him to investigate a copse of trees that is absent from the current map, but Liam has a frightening experience at the strange circular pool within, emerges crying.

Tomas goes in to find Liam’s lost boot, but is there a long time and comes out radically changed, garrulous instead of his usual taciturn self. What he’s babbling about has Liam anxious regarding the maps Tomas is meant to complete for much-needed payment. But neither of them has any idea of the changes to their futures that are wrought by their visit to the spring, the tobar the locals say is magical.

The local priest steps in to sort Tomas out, and the man who returns to Phina and their daughters in Dublin, with a smaller purse from the redcoats than expected, at first takes to his bed and refuses to work for the redcoats. Phina’s mending work won’t keep them fed or their rent paid, but soon, Tomas has an alarming plan for his family.

In their thatched cottage on the peninsula, eldest daughter, Enda misses her leading position in their Dublin street, but eventually finds solace in the fiddle their neighbour gives her; Phina can see that Tomas’s intentions to pass mapping skills on to Liam are falling on infertile ground; Rosie transfers her devotion from Phina to Bran, the enormous wolfhound who adopts them; baby Eugene watches, learns, absorbs, but never speaks; and Liam breaks his family’s hearts by becoming a Jesuit missionary.

As O’Farrell traces the paths of those who have lived on the peninsula, who have been affected by the spring, sometimes in small vignettes, sometimes more elaborately, she also explores the power of the clergy, and the connection to the land reminiscent of the Australian natives bond to country. Love, grief, poor choices, chance encounters and near misses, departures and arrivals, all feature in this wonderful work of historical fiction.

Throughout, O’Farrell treats the reader to exquisite descriptive prose: “A skein of marsh birds passes over his head, their cries a dissonant plucking on untuned instruments”, “… as if she is being scorched by the focused, inescapable beam of Rose’s fury all the way from the peninsula” and “Was it then that Liam felt his faith loosening in its foundation, like an unsound tooth?” are examples.

Also: “By the end of the following day, the cottage has acquired a thick lid of thatch, the straw-ends trimmed and shaped to a massed curve, the gables snugly covered. The rain slicks off it and the wind skims over it, as if the elements are surprised by this development and wish to test its properties.” Maggie O’Farrell always delivers.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Hachette Australia.

Land is an epic in the true sense of the word, encompassing not just a particular family, but a country, the world, the land itself. Magically written, with parts that are poetic in nature. It contrasts the impermanence of humans against the constancy of the land.
It begins with a map maker and his young son right after the Potato Famine, out charting the Irish countryside for the British. But soon it moves back two millennia to a time even before the Romans arrived in England.

At the heart of the story is a mysterious hidden pool that has been claimed by heathen and Catholic priests alike. The belief is that the water can give you what you need, not necessarily what you want. Told through a variety of points of view, we follow the six members of the main family and their loyal dog through multiple events, mostly tragic. I have to admit, the dog was my favorite of the characters. Yet, I cared about each of them and was anxious to know how their lives would unfold.

There’s a strong edge of magical realism to this book. That doesn’t always work for me, but it didn’t overwhelm the story. It’s a sad story with little in the way of hope or joy. It’s not a tale of plucky individuals finding a way to improve their lot in life. It’s about the business of surviving day after day in often miserable circumstances.

My thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for an advance copy of this book.