Maggie O’Farrell: Land book review – A nation in the soil
Maggie O’Farrell makes us think of the world afresh in her superb new time-hopping book. Kelly Apter lauds the tragic, cinematic and quietly powerful Land
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There is a basic premise underpinning Maggie O’Farrell’s wonderful new book, which holds fast even as the narrative sweeps across centuries, generations and continents: people come and go, but land remains constant, altered only briefly by the humans who inhabit it. Perhaps it’s too much for our brains to compute this notion that other feet, long gone, have traversed the same square inches we now occupy. But O’Farrell forces us to confront this, via an invitation to a small woodland on the west coast of Ireland. Here we meet Tomás, tasked with updating the Ordnance Survey map, aided by his not entirely willing young son Liam. Slowly, our understanding of Tomás pans out to reveal a past steeped in tragedy and a burgeoning family of six drenched in love.
Land, O’Farrell’s tenth novel, begins in 1865, goes back many millennia, then returns to the final decades of the 19th century. Some characters flit into view, gain brief access to our hearts, and are gone again. Others such as an arrogant priest and a kindly neighbouring widow leave a deeper mark. But it’s Tomás’ family we hold dear, regardless of their geographical status. So, whether we’re spending time with them on a rural peninsula or inside a cruel workhouse, the cramped multiple-occupancy rooms of inner city Dublin or the shores of Quebec swollen with new arrivals from around the globe, our rooting for them is strong.
Although much of Land is set a decade after the Great Hunger, this tragic period in Ireland’s history is omnipresent. Locked in the dark memories of those who witnessed it but survived, it casts a shadow over much of the story. O’Farrell’s depiction of the famine is never gratuitous, sentimental or even overtly political. Instead, with a few sparing words, she conveys the horror of hearing your child die of hunger and makes it clear how avoidable the whole thing was had the colonial powers that be decreed it.
In our digital age, where ‘mapping’ means following the small blue triangle on Google, Land encourages us to think again. For these important illustrations not only chart the contours and waterways of a country, they’re an indication of power and ownership, of who got to decide the language of place names. O’Farrell’s writing is, as always, evocative. We can almost hear the wind blowing in from the wild Atlantic ocean, feel the sodden moss and bog beneath feet, smell smoke from the burning peat swirl through the air. The characters, lovingly shaped and matured across 400-plus pages, jump up with such three-dimensional vibrancy, you can almost hear Chloé Zhao shouting ‘cut!’. For surely Land, like Hamnet before it, is destined for the cinematic viewing it deserves.
Land is published by Tinder Press on Tuesday 2 June; picture: Heather Chuter.