The award-winning author brings readers on a walking tour of Ireland’s early famine years with his latest work. The novel begins with the titular 14-year-old’s mother – who is widowed and heavily pregnant – ripping her daughter out of bed and cutting off all her hair. She tells Grace, “You are the strong one now”, and sends her off disguised as a boy to find work.
Accompanied by her younger brother, who gives her lessons on how to be a man, Grace sets about saving herself from hunger, as a “bilgewater stench” comes from the country’s fields. She moves from one job to another, all the while struggling to disguise her passing into womanhood.
Written in a style comparable to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Lynch’s poetic language finds beauty in even this devastating period of history. Grace, for example, is pictured beneath “a sky of old cloth and the sun stained upon it.” Overall, a powerful piece of work.