Book Pick for October 2026
In a year of surprise favorites, Land by Maggie O’Farrell has arisen as my October book pick since I can stop thinking about it. At times I have found Maggie O’Farrell’s prose hard to grasp or to stay focused on. However, the tapestry of the family trauma shaped by Ireland’s history that she weaves at the center of Land is so compelling, you can’t help but want to follow their life trajectory. As a descendent of Irish immigrants via Canada and having studied in Ireland, I am deeply interested in the struggles my ancestors endured to give me the life I live.
The story begins with pervasive mysticism entrenched in the Gaelic lifestyle prior to British rule and the death of a child who could communicate with the magic of the earth. This opening image leads to the intertwined tale of a man named Tomas’ in his adult nt life as a surveyor for the British and his childhood surviving the potato famine and his subsequent orphancy. His surveying job leads him to the glade where the girl from the start of the story is preserved in peat. He emerges in a crazed state and refuses to go to work. Eventually, his wife, with child once again forces him to return to work for the Brits and he accepts a job on a nearby isle. His son, Liam, does not want to leave his studies he has been attending at the new school sponsored by the church. When his daughter Enda poses as Liam and joins Tomas’ on the job, he is irate. However, when she brings out the violin that the widow down the road gave her, she is instantly accepted by the other men on the job and welcomed to stay. Returning home, Enda is forced back into the rural life of a woman, while her adventurous spirit is stifled she finds solace in her violin.
The sibling character foils are joined by the dutiful daughter, Rose, who helps her mother with chores and her younger brother. Eugene, who has never spoken and seems to be “touched.” He, too, works hard and the contrast of the younger siblings to the older two is only exacerbated by their progressing character arcs. These arcs lead Liam to enter into the priesthood, and Enda to abscond with the money her father had saved for Liam to leave for Canada as well as the emigration paperwork he bought for him. As the older siblings depart for lands far away, back home their aging parents eventually leave Rose and her brother as orphans. Taken in by the widow who gifted Enda her violin, Rose becomes the object of the land baron’s lust. When he acts on this, and she is saved by Eugene the two decide it is time to leave the land they have always known. The widow urges them to leave immediately and gives them the money to travel to find Rose across the seas. Upon departure, Eugene leaps from the ship and Rose, in despair, is left to find Enda alone. As the arcs of the siblings’ fuse, sister and sister and brother and brother, the aching legacy of the land of Ireland that has haunted generations of families for years gives voice to a homeland that has suffered so much and given America and Canada so many immigrants.