Whitcoulls Recommends: Land and On Mystic Lake

Land by Maggie O’Farrell. This is set in Ireland a few years after the potato famine, known as the Great Hunger,  and follows the story of Tomás and his young son Liam who are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. They stumble across a spring - a source of water with seemingly magical properties which completely changes Tomás and sets a series of events in play which will have permanent impacts on his family. The story of this book is essentially the story of Ireland - it ranges across many years and many of the formative events in the country’s history - famine, colonisation, Catholicism - and the effects on people over all those years. On Mystic Lake by Kristin Hannah. On the day her daughter leaves home, Annie’s husband tells her he’s fallen for a younger woman and their marriage is over. Devastated, she goes back to Mystic, the town where she grew up, to start to rebuild her life, and where she reconnects with a man who was her first love. Of course though, nothing is straightforward. Kristin Hannah writes terrific character lead fiction, being most well known recently for her wonderful book The Women.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.