Reviews with content warning for Trafficking - Prophet Song

Reviews tagging 'Trafficking'

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

13 reviews

florenceassetto's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

this book is really a work of literary genius! lynch's writing style took me a second to get used to but is so well suited to the story that he was telling. this book left me hoping for the characters as they were hoping, and despairing for them as they did as well. it's definitely something i would class as a modern dystopia and it's unlike anything i've read before but also so reminiscent of stories in real life. very powerful, and a very deserving booker prize winner!

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edward_eb's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I was really gripped by this book. Very pertinent to the terrible events happening all over the world today. And at its heart a book about family and love and the things people will do to keep what feels most familiar and safe, sometimes at a deadly cost. At points it was almost too sad and frustrating but absolutely worth the read and well crafted. It lends itself to audiobook very well too.

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eons_19's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Genuinely disturbing, I have never read a novel with Ireland as the setting of a totalitarian regime. Perhaps due to this or maybe just the setting in general, the novel sat with me for days after, I was unable to shake the feeling of being on edge.

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eilidhmacq's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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ronanmcd's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Hans Fallada's Alone in Dublin
It's almost too much to read. It's affecting my sleep. It's affecting how I'm looking at my surroundings.
I never take stock of prizes, but it's easy to see how this has been winning awards. You are in it. It's inescapable.
It's set in local places, Mount Temple, Joey's school, the promenade in Clontarf. And nothing happens for stretches, but real fear simmers. That's what makes it so powerful. It's believable. It captures so well the boiling frog metaphor. Changes come in and are accepted, however begrudgingly, until it's too late and everything has changed. It's not hard to see this happening around us, particularly as the Overton window has been shunted aside.
There are moments of clarity throughout, that leap from the text. Simon, Eilish's deteriorating father, points out none of this is new. There has always been a wing that will deny truth and facts, until they are irrelevant and unverifiable. Until you believe their lies, but even then truth comes back, as facts cannot be overruled.
And later Eilish's son, Mark, says fear attracts exactly what it is most afraid of.

But then...

The book changes when war comes. It becomes a story of a claustrophobic war in a small country. I read this as Israel bombarded Gaza, going far beyond a response to rocket attacks. And with politicians and members of the press cashing for Gaza's obliteration. ll the while politicians in Ireland acquiesce to the far right and discuss the "immigration question'
We see what brings this migration about, what it's really like to be forced to leave your own place, why we do it, why we try not to. The book's aims are huge.
But it is exceedingly grim.

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kiwichill's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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nessreadsalot's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

In this dystopian story Ireland is falling under a tyrannical government party who draw the country into a civil war.
Mother of 4 Eilis, is the main protagonist in this story and we follow her journey coming to terms with the changes and eventual collapse of society and her struggle to keep her family safe and together.

I found the unconventional writing style a little off putting to start but once I got settled into the story I found it added to the building feeling of claustrophobia and urgency. I really would have liked chapters shorter than 30+ pages though as someone who likes to use chapters as stopping points.

Eilis frustrated me so much at times with her insistence that everything was going to be OK soon but my heart was utterly broken for her by the end.

I can't say that I enjoyed this book because it's not an enjoyable subject. It was a book to be experienced that gives that little nudge to the fear that we are lucky by accident of birth that this is not our current reality.

"the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,”

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