Maggie O’Farrell
Land by Maggie O’Farrell blends historical fiction, Irish folklore, and magical realism in an epic family saga which includes the family’s encounter with a mysterious copse imbued with other worldliness. The novel is ambitious and complex with several narrative threads. Set in the post-famine Ireland of 1865, it focuses on Tomas and his family.
Tomas works for the British as a map-maker, mapping the physical terrain and learning the place names from the locals. He is determined to ensure the map reflects the devastating impact of the great famine by recording abandoned homes and graveyards. The novel opens with Tomas and his ten-year-old son, Liam, stumbling into a wooded copse surrounding an ancient spring in rural Ireland. Tomas emerges from this encounter babbling incoherently and announcing his determination to stop working for the British and to map the land as it really is. His family convince him to return to work because they need his income to survive.
The novel’s progression is non-linear. It shifts back in time to Tomas as a young boy in the workhouse, his meeting with a young girl who later becomes his wife, their children, and their relocation to land near the mysterious copse. The novel then shifts further back in time to Ireland’s original inhabitants which tells of a young girl being sacrificed to appease the gods. She is buried in the copse with her dog. She wears her father’s ring, which is discovered years later by Tomas’ youngest son, Eugene. Eugene never speaks but seems to be endowed with a mystical understanding that transcends the material world.
Tomas’ children forge different destinies over the decades. Liam abandons the priesthood and returns from India to continue his father’s work as a map-maker. The eldest daughter runs away to Quebec to be joined years later by her sister. And Eugene lives a solitary life in the copse.
The narrative unfolds as a series of episodes shifting from one character to the next. The pacing is uneven. The diction is detailed, dense, and immersive. The perspective shifts from people, to animals, and to the land, itself. O’Farrell imbues the land with a life-like presence, describing it in luminous detail and capturing its enduring power of survival. The characters are drawn as distinct individuals. But we get to know them primarily through their interiority as there is minimal dialogue. This has the effect of distancing the characters.
O’Farrell’s disparate threads explore the themes of the exploitation of Ireland and its people by British colonialism; the suffering of the Irish; the conflict between Catholicism and indigenous beliefs; the subordination of women; the people’s connection to the land; and the land as a physical custodian of historical events. There is so much going on in this complex novel that the focus becomes muddled and confusing. The writing is lyrical at times, but at others, it is too dense and slows down the narrative.
An ambitious undertaking and, perhaps, not as successful as O’Farrell’s other novels.