Let’s start by noting that O’Farrell authored Hamnet, which was made into a 2025 motion picture. As for Land, it was The Week Magazine’s Novel of the Week in its June 26, 2026, edition. So, both writer and book have had success commercially and critically. The Week specifically calls out the 25 page section of Land where O’Farrell goes on a historical road trip across Ireland’s history. Starting before Viking invasions, it briefly tells all, finally leading up to the 19th century potato famine and how it crushed the largely hand-to-mouth tenant farmers across the country; and then moves on with the novel post-famine and the legacy left to rebuild on.
We follow a family headed by Tomas, an Irish map-maker who works for the British government – reluctantly but accurately – since it pays well. O’Farrell liberally sprinkles traditional Irish words throughout the novel, but the key setting, an inert character, is of French origin: “copse” (a tightly knitted small woods, a cluster of trees generally standing alone.) This small wood with its streams and mysterious pool take me, almost viscerally, to the half dozen places on the farm I grew up on where valleys and streams and woods and creases in the land held me; and to a tiny island in the larger creek running through the farm. My brother and I lay down a plank to cross over to it and, having learned about deeds from our father, wrote one and had him deed the island to us. We established a small structure out of driftwood which, in a historical/legal sense, locked-in our claim to the land. The next spring, flood waters washed the island away. (“time held me green and dying…” Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill.)
But back to Land and the book’s plot: Tomas has an odd experience in the copse which changes him and endangers the family as he’s willing to challenge the notion of British map expectations. They get past that (kind of,) but then begins the travails of the family as a whole and members individually (mother Phina, daughters Enda and Rose, sons Liam and Eugene,) ultimately leading to family breakup, tragedy, make-up (somewhat,) and resolution (sort of) in that new generation as they reach adulthood. It’s a lot. In fact NYTmag.com’s review says that, because the author takes on so much, “the novel’s center does not quite hold.”
I found this to be true, but the prose is so rich that having too much happen and not quite getting it all resolved was ok with me. There’s a faithful wolf/dog and children who need to be resourceful beyond their years and on their own after their father changes. Who wouldn’t like that? And for me, it’s the land. The land is there and while a small peninsula in the scheme of the world, it’s home, and to the locals, it has (maybe, perhaps, but maybe not) magical powers with the copse and its pool, the larger woods, the fields and the streams. I get it.
As for the kids, it’s not really a coming of age story but one of growing up on the edge, under relentless risk, and with a drive for survival all while doing so, as the neighbor widow woman makes clear in a stoic tone, with a ‘it just needs to be done’ attitude (replace the word ‘it’ with any of the issues the family and its members face.)
The timeline is sometimes difficult to follow. We see a child character who was to do something but will remember years later that he/she failed to do it right; e.g.: “Tomas will remember years later that…” We see an adult mother and father as heads of the family but revisit their orphanage upbringing and their escape as teenagers. Back and forth like so many other current novels, it gives me whiplash in some ways, but is instructive to my two current projects as well.
Sadly in my view, there are two brief places where the author bleeds through the narrator with a parenthetical comment aimed directly at the reader, which is an 18th century device along the lines of “Dear Reader,” but in this case less direct and more like alas, our hero will not win her hand. A sin of commission in writing, or at least it has been up until, apparently, now. All this shows (once again,) how seasoned writers get away with things that would be immediately rejected by editors if found in a beginner’s manuscript.
My bottom line is to read this book: history, triumph, tragedy, relationships, and surviving while also thriving. And, at least for me, there’s the land. You’ll likely pick one of the characters as your favorite. Mine was Liam until he grew up. Then it was Eugene, who never grew up.
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