Maggie O’Farrell’s 10th Novel Land Reimagines Irish Famine Mapping as Myth-Laced Family Saga
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jun 1
Maggie O’Farrell’s 10th Novel Land Reimagines Irish Famine Mapping as Myth-Laced Family Saga
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jun 1
1865 Ireland anchors Land, where famine survivor Tomás and his 10-year-old son Liam map a peninsula for the Ordnance Survey while trying to preserve erased traces of hunger on official records.
A magical well shifts the novel from historical realism toward Celtic fable, sending Tomás into visions and setting off a multigenerational story that stretches from Dublin and Rome to Quebec and Kerala.
The review says that seanchaí-style storytelling gives the book ambition and texture, but sparse dialogue, episodic plotting and unstable point of view leave many characters underdeveloped and the narrative uneven.
Film prospects already loom: the same production company behind the Hamnet adaptation has acquired rights to Land, which the review argues may work better onscreen than on the page.
How does O'Farrell's magical realism reveal the unspoken truths of Ireland's Great Famine?
With Paul Mescal cast, how will the film capture the novel's non-human points of view?