\u2018His father was ever a man of few words,\u201d begins Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s 10th novel, a lengthy and ambitious story set in the aftermath of the Irish famine. Land opens in 1865 on a rainswept Irish peninsula and takes us to Dublin, Rome, Quebec and Kerala as it tells the story of two generations and gestures backwards and forwards at two more. The opening line came to O\u2019Farrell on a train journey from Belfast to Dublin, and became the way in to a story based in part on that of her great-great-grandfather, who worked for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland not long after the great hunger. \u201cWhat, I wondered, would it have been like to be revising the maps at that time,\u201d she writes in a short introductory note; \u201cto be recording and setting down the devastation that had occurred?\u201d<\/p>\n
In bitter weather, Tom\u00e1s and his 10-year-old son Liam are mapping a peninsula \u2013 perhaps Dunmore Head in County Kerry, though O\u2019Farrell doesn\u2019t specify \u2013 using surveying poles and measuring chains. Tom\u00e1s is in the pay of the English, who need him not only for his surveying ability and draughtsmanship, but for his language skills: they cannot easily find out from Irish speakers the names of places, or determine who owns what. It is Tom\u00e1s\u2019s job to untangle complex local legends\u00a0and obscure toponyms to create a usable map, and he wants to ensure that the marks left by the famine\u00a0\u2013 the empty houses and graveyards \u2013 are recorded on it, though the \u201credcoats\u201d sign their names to his work. A famine survivor himself, scarred by unspeakable trauma, he tolerates this: as we later discover, assisting the surveyors and learning their trade was his route out of the workhouse. He might not have survived otherwise.<\/p>\n
On the promontory Tom\u00e1s discovers a strange and forgotten place, a scrap of tangled woodland clustered around an ancient well. When he drinks its water he is transformed: instead of terse, he becomes voluble; instead of harsh, he is loving. He raves and seems to be\u00a0beset by visions, and he can no longer stand to work for the English. Liam must somehow stop him destroying all his work, and then get him home to the rest of the family: Tom\u00e1s\u2019s wife, Phina, whom he met in the workhouse when she was a girl \u201cwith curling\u00a0yellow hair falling to below her waist\u201d, and Liam\u2019s sisters Enda, who is clever, and Rose, who is beautiful. Phina is expecting a fourth child, Eugene, whose story will close the book; woven among these characters\u2019 lives is the story of the magic well and its effects, beginning in prehistory. With a talking fish, a huge, wise dog, a gold ring and the ability to grant supplicants either what they want or what they need, the legend of the well carries a strong flavour of Celtic\u00a0mythology.<\/p>\n
double quotation markEvents unfold episodically, and while that may be true of life, fiction needs a sense of causality to give it meaning and shape<\/p>\n
Land opens with an epigraph: the word \u201cseancha\u00ed\u201d and its definition, given here as both \u201ccustodian of tradition, historian\u201d and \u201creciter of ancient lore; traditional story-teller\u201d. This is clearly the role O\u2019Farrell wishes to adopt in this book, and it explains much about the narrative and the way it is constructed: the fable-like elements strewn amid otherwise realist passages; its occasional direct address to the reader; its use of coincidence (and fateful near-misses) as dramatic turning points; an unevenness regarding the passage of time, which speeds up and slows down several times; the use of well-worn phrases such as \u201cLiam sits bolt upright\u201d, \u201ca fight ensues\u201d and \u201cluck is on his side\u201d; and a point of view that shifts about between the human characters, two dogs, an unborn child, a house, the land itself, and an omniscient perspective broad enough to foretell the future and even, at one point, list worldwide events occurring concurrently with the narrative. These\u00a0elements suggest that Land should be approached less as a conventional novel and more as an act of traditional\u00a0storytelling.<\/p>\n
However, this narrative choice also means that Land is very light on dialogue, with speech being more frequently reported than rendered on the page. This makes the book very dense, while also reducing the opportunities for O\u2019Farrell to reveal rather than explain character: it is by hearing people speak that we really come to know them, and without enough dialogue many of the characters do not feel fully rounded, which makes following them from tragedy to tragedy something of an ask. There is a definite feeling of \u201cand then \u2026\u201d about the story: events unfold episodically, and while that may be true of life, fiction needs a sense of causality to give it meaning and shape.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Farrell co-wrote the the screenplay adaptation of her novel Hamnet<\/a>, which has been nominated for several awards, and the rights to Land have already been acquired by the same production company. There are scenes that feel as though the characters\u2019 movements are being described from an external, visual perspective, as one would write a short beat of action in a script: \u201cHe fits his hat to his head \u2026 then leaves\u201d; \u201cTom\u00e1s nods once \u2026 then waves her off with a curt gesture\u201d.<\/p>\n As a novel Land feels somehow uncomfortable in its own skin, neither fable nor history nor family saga, the voice of its seancha\u00ed not consistently or confidently inhabited. But with its narrator absent and its characters brought fully to life by actors, it will doubtless make an epic and richly textured film.<\/p>\n The Given World<\/a> by Melissa Harrison is published by Hutchinson Heinemann.<\/p>\n