You have seen Maggie O’Farrell’s Land. It is front and center on display tables and people are talking about it. Her first book, Hamnet, was a big deal and so this next book was bound to generate attention. Only problem is, at least in my opinion (and isn’t that why you’re reading this) Land is overhyped boring.
Oh the book starts out with promise. The writing is – really – extraordinarily beautiful. Subtle, specific and aching. I am for sure recommending you do not read this book the whole way through but you should read the first 50 pages for the pure enjoyment of the prose. And the plot from the opening is similarly promising: we’re in 19th century Ireland and a boy and his father are out making a map, strange circumstances in the forest and the father goes mad. All kinds of questions surface: what caused the madness? what will happen to the family given the precarity of their existence without the father’s income?
If only these were questions that could sustain 500 pages OR if only these questions were further complicated. Alas. What then follows is a sort of generational history of the plot of land and the people who had lived there. Which I regret to inform you does not constitute an interesting plot. Yes, of course, each family or person who lived on the land has unique stories and yes, of course, the book aims to remind the reader of the richness in history and longevity of the natural world that we so boldly claim to own or occupy. And in the case of Land the history of the land holds those of great acts of cruelty and suffering – including a lot about the Great Famine that I didn’t know and legit found interesting/haunting. However. You may be eager to read a genealogy of a place and if that’s the case you might well enjoy Land. If you are expecting something where characters develop or Things Happen you best look elsewhere. This is a novel that took the idea of ‘setting’ and ‘literary devices’ just… didn’t bother to sketch out how the rest of the elements of fiction might need to come into play.
I’m sure I’m wrong – I have to be because everyone else seems to love this book – so tell me why and how.
Literary Vice 