finished reading

So, I’ve been sitting with this book for a while, trying to figure out how to articulate what it’s truly about, given its lack of a traditional plot. Rather, it’s an immersive story of how a place takes hold, carrying the echoes of the past alongside hope for the future.

Set in Ireland, the narrative follows Tomás, who has little recollection of his childhood after barely surviving the Great Hunger in a poorhouse. There, he meets Phina, who later becomes his wife, and together they raise four children: Liam, Enda, Rose, and Eugene.

A gifted cartographer, Tomás is hired by the British government to redraw and redistrict Ireland during the 1860s Ordnance Survey. When ten-year-old Liam accompanies his father to learn the craft, a mystical experience in a remote copse changes them forever. It is here that the history of the land and all who came before cast an indelible shadow over their lives. As the children grow, they face unimaginable hardships and heartbreak, yet continually find ways to persevere.

I cannot say enough about the beauty of this book. The atmosphere, deep emotional resonance, and exquisite writing held me from start to finish. Despite the heavy themes, I couldn't put it down. Additionally, the audiobook narration is phenomenal; Dane Whyte O'Hara's authentic Irish cadence makes O'Farrell's prose and subtle folklore elements come vibrantly alive.

From the publisher:

'You will never understand how the land remembers, how deep the roots grow'

A spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy.

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.