Author: Paul Lynch
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Reviewer: Stephen Keim
Two quotations form the epigraph of Prophet Song. The first is that famous passage from Ecclesiastes: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.
The second is a more obscure passage from Bertolt Brecht:
“In the dark times
will there be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing,
About the dark times.”
One should not judge a novel by its epigraph. One might infer, however, that the passage from Ecclesiastes signals a claim by Lynch that the fictional events that he traverses in Prophet Song are both common place and universal. The Brecht quote, although more obscure, suggests that the need for all forms of art is even greater in societies that are suffering conflict and oppression.
For Lynch, for whom Prophet Song is his fifth novel and whose writing is acclaimed for the poetic and lyrical nature of the prose he produces, the title appears to be a claim both to be providing a song about the dark times and to be satisfying that need for societies that are experiencing such suffering.
It seems inapposite, despite Ireland’s centuries long history of colonial oppression by its neighbouring empire and the sectarian violence that is the enduring legacy of that oppression, that Ireland would be the setting for a country which has elected a populist government and is sliding into a state of merciless authoritarianism. Especially, for Australian readers, so many of whom carry some Irish heritage with them, whether this is reflected in our current family names or not, Ireland seems too fun loving, too compassionate and too down to earth for extremism to flourish sufficiently to seize the reins of government power.
The unlikely nature of Ireland as a setting adds power to the warning that the reader discerns from every page of Prophet Song.
Eilish Stack is a mother of three children, the youngest of whom is little more than a toddler and two of whom are of school age. Her husband, Larry, is a full-time official of the Teachers’ Union. Larry is still at work as the novel opens. As darkness rapidly falls among the cherry trees in the backyard of their Dublin home, Eilish’s evening is disrupted by a knock on the door by two officers of the Garda National Service Bureau, the political wing of the new government’s police force. They are polite and ask for Larry and, in his absence, leave a card for him to contact them.
Things have obviously changed since the recent election of a populist government and the parliament has enacted emergency powers including the ability to suspend protections in the Constitution. Eilish and Larry are stressed by developments (including the invitation to attend for an interview at the Garda offices) but also carry a sense of disbelief that things have progressed as far as the evidence, otherwise, suggests.
Larry’s visit to the Garda reveals to him a file containing a series of outrageous allegations (the contents of which the reader is left to infer). This only increases Larry’s sense of disbelief. “Wait until the general secretary hears about this” is his response.
Larry and Eilish’s discussions centre about a planned strike by teachers and a planned march by the strikers. Eilish flirts with advising caution but, before Larry leaves for work, gives him the go ahead to give the union and the teachers the go-ahead. In the light of future events, Eilish questions her action in giving such advice. One senses that her instincts were for caution but, ultimately, Eilish felt that it was not her place to hold her husband back from following the beliefs that had perfused his whole life’s actions.
Larry disappears and Eilish finds herself possessing a new status among the families of the disappeared.
Prophet Song is one family’s experience of a country’s slide into totalitarianism. Even more so, it is one woman, Eilish’s, experience of such events. She continues to work at her own job outside the family. She continues to look after her family. As time passes, the normal friction associated with children growing up and obtaining their own attitudes and worldview operates in this new everchanging society. Eilish seeks to protect and reassure her children but her sometimes Candide like expressions of optimism that things will get better rather than worse fail to convince, at least, her two older children, Bailey and Molly.
At work, some colleagues sport the badges of the governing party and their influence grows in the running of the organisation. The pressure to come on board or leave increases as well.
An armed resistance emerges. A civil war ensues. Every event impacts upon Eilish and her children. Nothing continues to be heard of Larry’s location or even his continuing existence. This notwithstanding, Eilish continues in her head to discuss the events of the day with and seek advice from her absent husband.
The unremitting darkness of Eilish’s existence is reinforced by the layout of the typesetting. Paragraphs are absent. There are no inverted commas. Everything is observed through Eilish’s experience. Sections of narrative run for pages at a time. A section break occur after those several pages. Each section is like a mini-chapter and the next section commences with a slight break in time or location so that a new narrative commences. The chapters, themselves, do commence, each on a new page, but they carry only numbers.
Despite the bleakness, reinforced in this way by the layout and structure of the novel, the prose that Lynch produces is beautiful and, indeed, lyrical. Prophet Song does feel to the reader like a song notwithstanding that it is, indeed, a song about the dark times.
In an interview with PBS News Hour’s Geoffrey Brown, Lynch references a passage in Prophet Song in which Eilish has the realisation that the end of the world is local. Lynch says that the end of the world is always happening and, sometimes, it comes to our neighbourhood. During and since the writing of Prophet Song, Lynch has had in mind events in Syria, in Ukraine and Russia, and in Palestine.
This truth that the end of the world can find us, wherever we live, even in mundane Ireland and even in our own neighbourhoods, is, perhaps, the prophecy of which Prophet Song is made. “Of arms and the woman”, he sings.
