Despite a thoroughly satisfying ending, Land, the historical novel by Maggie O’Farrell, had me wishing for more. After reading more than 400 pages about Tomás and his family, I cared deeply about every character.
The novel unfolds in the mid-1850s in Ireland, after the potato blight devastated the country. As the title implies, the fictional peninsula on the Atlantic coast plays the part of another character in the novel. Its copse and stream, its boreen (path), its peat and its vegetation form the unchanging stage on which Tomás and his family play out their lives.
The novel begins with the life-changing experience which led Tomás to move his family from town to the remote peninsula. Tomás, a self-contained man of few words, and his 10-year-old son Liam venture out into a bitter storm to survey the terrain of the peninsula for the British. The boy enters a copse which contains a seemingly bottomless pool of water. He becomes spooked by the enclosing foliage, screams and stumbles out. Tomás then enters and fails to emerge for a long time. When he does, he can’t stop talking.
O’Farrell sets the tone for Land with her rich sensory descriptions of the peninsula. An account of the map Tomás produces makes the descriptions more detailed and vivid. Against this dramatic backdrop, O’Farrell establishes the characters of Tomás and Liam in such a compelling way that I was hooked by this opening scene.
Such was my fascination from the start that I found myself reading quickly. At the same time, my inclination was to slow down and savour the beauty of O’Farrell’s writing. If you enjoyed reading Hamnet or watching the film of the same, you will love this latest novel by Maggie O’Farrell.