Contemporary literature

Set in nineteenth-century Ireland in the aftermath of the Great Famine, Land follows Tomás, a surveyor, and his family as their lives unfold under the pressures of loss, faith and displacement. Beginning with a mapping expedition undertaken by Tomás and his young son, Liam, the novel expands across generations and continents, intertwining a family’s history with the enduring mysteries of the landscape.

Beautifully written and deeply absorbing, Land is both eerie and inspiring. Maggie O’Farrell creates a world in which material hardship coexists with an unsettling sense of the supernatural. Mysticism permeates the narrative, giving the impression that the visible world is only one layer of reality, beneath which older beliefs, memories and presences continue to exert their influence.

Among the novel’s greatest strengths is its intricate, nonlinear structure. O’Farrell moves between different periods of her characters’ lives with considerable assurance, making the gaps between episodes a source of suspense. Scenes of Liam’s childhood give way to a glimpse of his adult life, in which he faces questioning in circumstances that suggest he may have committed some terrible offence. The effect is compelling: we want to discover what happened, but also to understand how the child we have met could become the man before us.

O’Farrell is particularly adept at manipulating the reader’s horizon of expectation. She invites assumptions, allows them to settle, and then reveals how much depended on information she had withheld. One especially effective sequence appears to place Liam in two locations at once: at the seminary and in Canada. The eventual revelation that his sister has travelled under his identity transforms an apparent contradiction into a satisfying act of narrative misdirection. It also prompts us to reconsider how readily we trust the connections we make while reading.

The richness of the storytelling extends to its multiple focalisations. Alongside human perspectives, O’Farrell gives us those of animals and even an unborn child. These shifts enlarge the novel’s imaginative world, suggesting forms of perception beyond those its central characters can articulate. Together with the prolepses) the glimpses of events still to come), they create a narrative in which different lives and moments seem to exist in intimate relation to one another .

Yet the plotting occasionally feels less subtle than the narrative technique. For my taste, certain turning points rely too heavily on cinematic convention. Tomás’s last-minute intervention as Phina is about to leave for Australia has something of the Hollywood rescue about it. Similarly, an apparently impoverished older woman’s sudden provision of money enabling the siblings to travel to Canada and join their sister feels conspicuously convenient. Such moments produce an immediate emotional effect, but the machinery behind them is rather too visible.

These reservations do not diminish the novel’s considerable beauty. Its haunting atmosphere, narrative inventiveness and emotional reach make "Land" a memorable reading experience. What remains with me is its ability to sustain wonder alongside suffering, and to make the desire for another life feel both urgent and enduring. Such is the quality of "Land" that I was surprised it did not at least make this year’s Booker Prize longlist.