The Butchers' Blessing
-
-
3.7 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2021 RSL Ondaatje Prize
Set in the gothic wilds of Ireland, The Butchers’ Blessing is a haunting and unforgettable thriller brimming with secrecy, tradition, and superstition.
Every year, Úna prepares for her father to leave her. He will wave goodbye early one morning, then disappear with seven other men to traverse the Irish countryside. Together, these men form the Butchers, a group that roams from farm to farm, enacting ancient methods of cattle slaughter.
The Butchers’ Blessing moves between the events of 1996 and the present, offering a simmering glimpse into the modern tensions that surround these eight fabled men. For Úna, being a Butcher’s daughter means a life of tangled ambition and incredible loneliness. For her mother, Grá, it’s a life of faith and longing, of performing a promise that she may or may not be able to keep. For nonbeliever Fionn, the Butchers represent a dated and complicated reality, though for his son, Davey, they represent an entirely new world—and potentially new love. For photographer Ronan, the Butchers are ideal subjects: representatives of an older, more folkloric Ireland whose survival is now being tested. As he moves through the countryside, Ronan captures this world image by image—a lake, a cottage, and his most striking photo: a man, hung upside down in a pose of unspeakable violence.
Thrilling, dark, and richly atmospheric, The Butchers’ Blessing is an engrossing incantation—mesmerizing in both language and story—conjuring a family and a country on the edge of irrevocable change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Gilligan's remarkable latest (after Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan), a group of eight men known as the Butchers slaughter and dress cattle on a series of farms in Ireland, practicing ancient rituals meant to ward off a curse. As mad cow disease upends the British beef industry in 1996, American photographer Ronan Monks shoots a photo of a dead man hanging from a meat hook driven through his feet in County Monaghan, where Monks has come to photograph life in the Irish border counties. The man in Monks's photo is a Butcher, but the circumstances of his death remain mysterious for much of the novel, which flashes forward to 2018, with Monks planning to show the photo for the first time. The bulk of the narrative uses four viewpoints: Gr , lonely after her husband leaves for the Butchers' long annual journey, is attracted to Monks. Gr 's daughter, na, reveres the Butcher heritage and hopes to become the first female Butcher. She practices their rituals and knife skills while her classmates' bullying tempts her to violence. Dairy farmer Fionn joins a risky cattle smuggling scheme in order to pay for treatments at a clinic he believes could cure his wife's brain cancer. Fionn's son, Davey, hopes his college entrance exams will qualify him to study in Dublin. As the desperate protagonists discover how far they will go for their desires, their stories illuminate the power of myth, the tensions between past and present, and the weight of family expectations. With beautifully crafted prose, suspenseful plotting, and imaginative scope, Gilligan's off to a blazing start. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated this was the author's first novel.
