Land: A Novel | Maggie O'Farrell

“A rich portrait of family life. . . . Land is a historical novel imbued with O’Farrell’s signature interest in absorbing family relationships. . . . O’Farrell’s writing is propulsive and luscious throughout.” —The New York Times

“O’Farrell is expansive, full of rigor. . . . [Land] stages an argument about the virtues of various types of maps—those that are measured, those that are recollected, those that are dreamed. Some of these approaches require meticulous scholarship and technical proficiency; others, an attunement to the invisible realms of feeling and folklore.” —The New Yorker

“Land, O’Farrell’s sweeping tenth novel and third consecutive work of historical fiction, is her most ambitious and dynamic work to date. At the sentence level, its craftsmanship sings; her prose is as lush and imbued with the miraculous as it is lived-in and inviting. . . . O’Farrell renders each member of this family and their respective responses to their new home with the precise and tender intuition that distinguishes her as a storyteller.” —Vulture

“At once canny and artful, Land manages to transport its reader to a distance time and place while simultaneously alluding obliquely to the concerns of today. . . . Throughout, O’Farrell deftly balances passages of lush, literary description and rumination on loss with nuggets of narrative-fueling conflict.” —Slate

“A soaring, visionary narrative. . . . As the struggling men and women in Land endure defeat and distrust victory, it is their frailty as much as their strength that wins our sympathy and holds our attention.” ­—The Wall Street Journal

“A powerful epic. . . . Land is lushly written, atmospheric, and heartbreaking—yet it is also a moving paean to perseverance, survival, and forgiveness. . . . A magnificent achievement.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“A rich, irresistible story. . . . O’Farrell is not just telling a 19th-century story, she’s tilling the fields of those great Victorian novelists who understood that the only thing that redeems the contrivance of an unlikely coincidence is the pleasurable shock it gives us.” —Ron Charles

“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, author of North Woods

“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, author of In Memoriam 

“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, author of In Love

“Land is as visceral as a novel can get. It feels deeply and it tells deeply, both of nature and of the small tragedy of man. It's rare to find a story so grand told with such a fine brush. Land read to me as ancient and brand-new all at once, and something best experienced by diving into it headfirst.” —Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep

“Expansive and intimate, this beautiful book swallowed me whole. I loved it and will miss its characters terribly.” —Charlotte McConaghy, author of Wild Dark Shore

“Wondrous and magisterial.” —Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire

“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, author of Trespasses

“A visceral and magical story about separation, and our complex relationship with the world beyond words.” —Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“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, author of Glorious Exploits

“A stunning achievement. Maggie O’Farrell’s most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it.” —Bobby Palmer, author of Main Characters

“A stunning and gorgeous epic. . . . O’Farrell paints a devasting yet tender portrait of Irish history.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Evocative and impassioned. . . . Steeped in Irish history and folklore, alive with a sense of wonder.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“A transfixing epic . . . [Land] adds to O’Farrell’s reputation as a superb literary stylist. . . . This wonderfully expansive yet intimate saga, which illustrates how individuals survive the devastating legacies of imperialism and religious control, offers a sense of empathetic harmony between author and subject.” —Booklist (starred review)

“O’Farrell’s latest is highly recommended for all fiction collections. This lyrical and moving historical novel about Ireland and one family within its larger history will enchant her fans and anyone who likes family sagas.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Maggie O'Farrell was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1972. Her novels include Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction), The Marriage Portrait, After You’d Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award), and Instructions for a Heatwave. She has also written a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. She lives in Edinburgh.