Book Review - Land by Maggie O'Farrell

Title: Land
Author: Maggie O’Farrell
Genre: Historical fiction
Published: 2026
 
Description: On a windswept peninsula stretching our into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task it not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
 
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás, and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?
 
Review: After the overwhelming success of “Hamnet”, I was really looking forward to Maggie O’Farrell’s new book and it was my in-person book club pick this month. Her writing has a way of completely transporting you to another time and place. “Land” has an intriguing premise and is stylistically exceptional, but unfortunately, the story largely failed to captivate me this time.
 
The story begins in 1865 on a rainy Irish peninsula, shortly after the devastating Great Hunger. The novel follows the taciturn Irish cartographer Tomás, who, commissioned by the British army, is meticulously mapping the transformed and traumatized landscape of Ireland. When he stumbles upon something mysterious in a copse, he has a revelation that turns his entire worldview upside down. And it changed his family’s life forever.
 
The novel is structured in four parts, no chapters. They shed light on the broad history of this family spanning several generations and continents. In part one, we follow Tomás and his young song Liam, crossing the peninsula and the massive transformation at the copse. Part two delves deeper into family life in Ireland and how Tomás rebellion against the authorities and the Church completely disrupt the family dynamic. In the third part we read about the family’s disintegration and it follows the children as they are forced to scatter across the globe. Liam travels to India to join the Jesuits, while daughter Enda flees to Canada with forged documents. In the final and fourth part the various storylines and continents are brought together. This concluding section connects the past with the future and shows how the remaining family members try to survive and keep the memory of their homeland alive.
 
Although the book is undeniably beautifully written, reading it was, unfortunately, quite a challenge. O’Farrell describes absolutely everything beautifully and with an impressive eye for detail, but this also makes the book move at a very slow pace. For me, most of the story was downright boring. I really had to struggle through it and resist the urge to put it down. It wasn’t until part 4 that it finally became interesting and more engaging for me, because that’s where the various storylines finale converge and the emotional weight becomes palpable. As for the rest of the book, I could not connect to the story nor the characters.
 
I thought her previous book “Hamnet” was fantastic, but “Land” unfortunately failed to live up to those high expectations. It’s a beautifully written historical portrait, but due to its lack of momentum, I can’t give it more than 2,5 stars.
 
Rating: 2,5/ 5