It was in 2008 that I read my first Maggie O’Farrell book, so, yes, I am a fan.
Land begins in the 1860s, more than a decade after the famine; Tomàs is creating a map for the “redcoats,” those oppressors of Ireland. Tomàs and his wife Phina, both lost their families during the famine and managed to survive their time in the workhouse and somehow Tomàs acquired the skills needed to be a mapmaker.
Along with the hugely important historical famine in the background, this novel has many familiar tropes from Irish literature. There’s the priest overly excited to do an exorcism, a fiddle player, a member of the gentry thinking he can have his way with anyone he fancies, the ever-loyal dog, and ancient springs with magical powers. O’Farrell reaches back to prehistory to tell give us part of this picture. Though I ticked these items off crudely, the message comes to us appealingly and effectively.
At the outset Tomàs is mapping with the help of Liam, his ten year old son. Liam gets his boot stuck in a spring in a copse. After he is extricated, Tomàs goes into the copse and is never the same. He has seen something that makes him want to map the true countryside in defiance of the redcoats, to reject the conquerers of their land. He believes he can map using their own names, not the redcoat names, estate lines or plantation boundaries. Mapping does acknowledge the power of the overlords. Is it wishful thinking that makes Tomàs think he can change everything by changing the maps? In reaction to his new belief, the priest concludes Tomàs has been taken over by the devil and isolates and starves him as part of the exorcism. The priest accepts his role in supporting the power structure as it was.
Tomàs recovers, but abruptly moves the family to the west of the country on the peninsula near the copse. Phina only agrees to this radical move if he will agree to support the family by mapping again for the British overlords. Over the course of the book we come to know about the lives of the children of Tomàs and Phina: Liam, who repents having become a priest; Enda, the bold older daughter, who escapes with her fiddle to Canada; Rose, left to take care of the younger brother, Eugene, who is never able to speak.
After only Rose and Eugene remain on the peninsula, one morning Eugene noticed the wind was coming from the southeast which was unusual. A cow was bellowing, the sea was gray and swollen, and he saw two ravens rising from the undergrowth. When Rose later told him the bread wasn’t rising, he was so uneasy he made her promise not to leave the house. After she broke her promise to him, much worse events than merely a storm occurred that day, requiring the two of them to flee their home. Though Eugene cannot speak, we learn he is both keenly observant and resourceful.
This is an intensely interesting and engaging book.
Maggie O’Farrell, Land, Alfred A. Knopf, 2026, 383 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available in the public library.