PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Land confronts the central trauma of nineteenth-century Irish history, the Great Famine, while giving voice to one of its most frequently told stories, that of the Ordnance Survey of the island ... O’Farrell, no stranger to documenting shocking losses and near-misses (see her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen brushes with death, 2017) is on home ground as she sketches in a ruptured family history ... A skilled storyteller, O’Farrell blends perspectives with an easy touch. Points of view and historical periods merge on the page, with little use of print ornaments (asterisks, rules) or other devices to signal the movement of the narrative ... Land possesses us of a generalized lost past, making a legendary map that is filled with magical noises, but strangely empty of significance.
