Prophet Song is the 2023 winner of the Booker Prize and whilst an interesting read is by no means my favourite Booker-winner that I have read. It follows Eilish, a microbiologist and mother of four, living in a not-to-distance Ireland. She's just returning to work following the birth of her fourth child when her husband Larry, who works in education unions, is invited in for questioning by the police following an election of a new government. From there we sink further into a nationalist regime, Larry disappears and the country descends into civil war.

This is no doubt an interesting thought experiment, and there are moments that Lynch brings to the page which are really effective. The shifting in media avaliability, the moments of protest being hit by violence, the last quarter of the novel in particular as Eilish (finally) recognises the real desperation that her family are in have really stuck with me. However, I was left feeling slightly disconcerted by a narrative which 'imagines' events that are happening in countries now - and I'm not sure if this could have been more effective if Lynch had positioned this novel in one of those many places (this bought to mind The Beekeeper of Aleppo for example). I also found it strange that Ireland's history of occupation and violence was not mentioned in the pages of this novel, when I think it would still be in the memories of many of the characters in the novel.

As hinted at above, I found Eilish a slightly frustrating protagonist to be following, who seemed entirely oblivious to the reality of the world around her. Unlike the protaganist in Black Butterflies, who similarly remains in a war zone past the point of being able to flee, we don't get a sense of what keeps Eilish where she is - aside from her commitment to the men in her family. She is a scientist, a woman whose career is based on evidence, who seemingly ditches this the moment her husband leaves. The children are generally well-drawn, although I felt that Molly was poorly served by a narrative that focused on her brothers and sidelined her. I particularly liked Lynch's portrayal of Eilish's father, he felt an effective additional character to the narrative, and the reminder that multiple crisis can hit at once, as he appears to be struggling with the arrival of dementia.

As others have reflected, Lynch's writing veers from the impactful and effective to the deeply overwritten - I could have done with slightly fewer musings on darkness, and Eilish's children's faces - I think sometimes these descriptions undermined the strength of Lynch's narrative.

All in all, this is a fine novel - and if it's setting means more people pick this up than would pick up a refugee narrative than that is fine, but I'm surprised by it's Booker winning status.