Queen B Reads Prophet Song: Week Four

Breaking points, murders, senility, insurrectionists, beautiful war, and worms.

We have reached the point in this reading journey where I feel like three more weeks is too long to have to wait to finish Queen B Reads Prophet Song by Paul Lynch; yet, I also feel like we don’t have enough time to parse out every morsel of goodness from these chapters. It is rare that I read a book I feel so desperately should be read by every single person, but this is the kind of contemporary dystopian fiction I feel as shaken by as I often imagine modern readers were when Orwell first published 1984. I mean this in the best, most necessary way possible, but I also mean this with a level of urgency to share this read far and wide, terrified that it will fall on deaf ears as many dystopian tales often do.

So, I’m also just here in this little corner of the internet to share what I’m learning and loving about this novel with a dose of hope that maybe it is enough if we are affirmed and inspired by the authors who bear the burden of warning us. Or maybe, with our privilege to only read speculative fiction rather than live its horrors, we too bear the burden to warn others.

Or, maybe, we just have to celebrate this novel for the thrilling read it is and do some breathing exercises to keep from spiraling out of control for a minute? Oh, you’re all fine? Okay, that last bit is just for me, then. Chill, Bri, come on . . .

Today we’re talking about chapters four and five of Prophet Song. Eilish must go to even greater lengths to keep her children safe, sending Mark to a boarding school to avoid the mandatory draft while attempting to maintain normalcy with the rest of her children at home. But, with no answers about her husband’s death, the continuous rise of disappearances of individuals across the nation, insurrectionist rebels gaining traction, and hateful vandalism of perceived traitors, Eilish is finding it harder and harder to assure her children, and herself, that things will ever return to “normalcy” again. Can she actually force Mark to go to boarding school rather than join the rebel cause? Can she keep Molly from falling into despair? Can she prove to Bailey that her intentions are good? And above all, can she continue to pretend that a war isn’t brewing right under her nose?