Land

Reviews / Votes

A deep-mapping of a place and its people, a heart-bursting story of resilience and love. Land is simply the best novel I've read in years -- Louise Kennedy A breathtaking hymn to the sanctity of natural spaces, operating on timescales both intimate and geological. I finished Land moved not only by the vivid lives of its human characters, but the thrumming, gorgeous presence of its mosses, waters, winds and skies -- Daniel Mason Haunting and elemental in its evocation, Land is a novel of startling imagination and power. Upon finishing it, I did not feel so much that I had read a book as lived inside it -- Ferdia Lennon Wondrous and magisterial -- Kamila Shamsie A stunning achievement. Maggie O'Farrell's most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it. -- Bobby Palmer Expansive and intimate, this beautiful book swallowed me whole. I loved it, and will miss its characters terribly -- Charlotte McConaghy A work of towering imagination and empathy; a beautifully layered novel, told in lyrical, haunting prose which transforms familiar history into something new and startlingly relevant. To read this novel is to embark on an emotional journey, to lose yourself in the pages of a story that is at once devastating and irrepressibly life affirming. I loved it -- Roisin O'Donnell As visceral as a novel can get -- Yael van der Wouden Land is a vast, darkly magical novel from a masterful writer. Maggie O'Farrell's historical fiction illuminates not only the past, but our own moment in time. A brilliant and powerful novel -- Alice Winn This deep, dense, heartrending novel is the best of Maggie O'Farrell, who is the best of writers, modern and alive, with the detailed brilliance of great nineteenth-century storytellers. All I need as a reader is in Land -- Amy Bloom A stunning and gorgeous epic. . . . O'Farrell paints a devasting yet tender portrait of Irish history * Publishers Weekly, starred review * Land is a hidden grove of a book. Since leaving its pages, the stories hiding in place-names and redacted maps have seemed palpable in my everyday life. I loved the characters, the slowing effect of O'Farrell's prose and her careful splicing of story into history -- Amy Jeffs A visceral and magical story about separation, and our complex relationship with the world beyond words * Rachel Joyce, author of The Homemade God * Beautifully done, with descriptions that are both intricate and locked into character * Scotsman * Evocative and immersive . . . a haunting, beautifully written story of survival and memory * Woman and Home * Sweeping and vast, Land is a captivating story of family and how the land we share carries our stories * Red * Powerfully affecting . . . expert plotting and perspective * Financial Times * Her most far-reaching, ambitious novel to date . . . a story of grief, trauma, resilience and recovery. A story that has such heart . . . With Land, O'Farrell might snag a Booker nomination * Sunday Times * I think that people will hugely love this book. It's a big, sweeping, Irish, multi-generational story. The writing's wonderful. There's magic elements to it. It's a real crowd-pleaser of a book -- Ann Patchett * Good Housekeeping US * This is a rich, irresistible story, as intoxicating as the water Tomas drank in that "unquiet place" amid the trees -- Ron Charles