Off the Shelf: Profit Song

Prophet Song, this year’s Booker Prize winner, is a harrowing and dystopian novel that visibly renders a mother’s determination to protect her family as Ireland’s liberal democracy slides inexorably and terrifyingly into totalitarianism. The story is set in a version of contemporary Dublin. Eilish, the mother/protagonist,” hears a knock at the door. There are two policemen outside who want to speak to her husband, Larry. “It is nothing to worry about,” one of them says, though of course, Eilish starts to worry and questions her husband when he comes home.

 Eilish is a biologist who works for a biotech company. Larry is the deputy general secretary of the teacher’s union. They have four children and live comfortable middle-class lives with all of the usual anxieties: battles with teenagers and fights with ageing parents. But the tone from the beginning has a suppressed intensity.

A “National Alliance Party” has recently taken control and passed an Emergency Powers Act. Larry, due to his position, is in the government’s sights. A big demonstration is planned and Eilish doesn’t want him to go, but he goes anyway and marches. What follows is a descent into chaos.

 Lynch never explains the “emergency,” which means it has no history. There are no opposing sides and the reader never learns what they’re arguing about, apart from the rule of law.

The novel is difficult to follow. There are no paragraphs. Dialogue is not punctuated with quotation marks, which means that following a conversation takes some detective work.

Larry never returns from the protest march. Their oldest son, Mark, goes underground to escape being abducted into the “party.” The second oldest son, Bailey, is injured in a bomb attack and is whisked away to a hospital.

Eilish goes from hospital to hospital, trying to track down her wounded son while trying to contact her aging father to find a way out. A sister, Aine, who lives in Canada, urges her to get out, but she and her two other children stubbornly refuse to leave until it is almost too late. Ireland is descending into total chaos and the border to the north becomes the only possible outlet for emigration.

Lynch does an excellent job of showing just how swiftly and possibly a society like Ireland’s could collapse. This is a chilling study of Ireland becoming a fascist state. This is a TOP SHELF and urgent, important read.