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Maggie O\u2019Farrell is most famous for \u201cHamnet<\/a>,\u201d the story of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway\u2019s son, which was adapted into a 2025 film<\/a> by Chlo\u00e9 Zhao. It was recognized for its phenomenal performances both by the those who vote for the academy awards<\/a> and by other much more important<\/a> tastemakers. Just two months later, \u201cLand\u201d hit American bookstores on June 2, in a great example of good timing.\u00a0<\/p>\n This portrait of Ireland, however, is also prescient in a different way, focusing on a more recent facet of Irish history. <\/p>\n Sinn F\u00e9in, famous<\/a> Irish nationalist party, won the 2022 elections in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and since 2024, has been the second-largest party in the Republic of Ireland\u2019s D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann, its lower legislative body. For the first time ever, every one of the United Kingdom\u2019s decentralized parliaments are controlled by<\/a> nationalist parties. In the Republic of Ireland, Sinn F\u00e9in polls measurably higher than its mainstream rivals, who have slumped in support since 2024. The surge in Irish nationalism reflects a lot of things, one of them being the centuries-old debate over what makes Ireland, who is Irish and what is still Irish after colonization. Maggie O\u2019Farrell manages to capture quite a lot of this sweep of history in \u201cLand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The novel\u2019s main timeline takes place during the Ordnance Survey of 1865<\/a>. From here we move forward, into the 1880s, and backward, to the Great Hunger<\/a> and even into Ireland\u2019s ancient and slightly mystic beginnings. Mysticism is all over \u201cLand,\u201d as present as the redcoats or weather. This aspect is also a magical bailout for extraordinary situations that the characters find themselves in. From the book\u2019s very start, what happens to the characters sometimes feels frustratingly arbitrary. The best explanation we get is that the characters in \u201cLand\u201d seem to be subject to the mystical forces of Ireland, which exist beyond the British, Catholicism, mundane daily life or the struggle to survive in famine. O\u2019Farrell\u2019s interest in these topics is great, but also leaves the reader feeling like the world they\u2019re reading about does not have fixed rules and then, immediately, it\u2019s much harder to care.<\/p>\n