The Black Snow

March 9, 2015
Lynch returns to rural Donegal, the setting for his debut, Red Sky at Morning, in this stark tale of tragic consequences. Farmer Barnabas Kane, his teenaged son, Billy, and farmhand Matthew Peeples are working in the fields when the byre that houses the farm’s cattle begins to burn. Barnabas urges Peeples into the blaze before entering it himself, and neither the farmhand nor the cattle survive. As the community and Barnabas himself question his role in Peeples’s death, the Kane family’s life seems to disintegrate. Barnabas cannot rebuild the byre, having let the insurance lapse, and he refuses to sell land to raise the money despite his financial desperation. Insisting the fire was deliberately set, the once-valiant farmer spirals into depression, drink, and a combativeness that isolates the family further. His wife, Eskra, battles to preserve her faith in her husband and the farm, while Billy—whose journals punctuate the omniscient narration—struggles alone with adolescent growing pains and a searing sense of responsibility. Details reference World War II, but Lynch’s beautifully intertwined emotional and physical landscapes have a timelessness. Unconventional, sometimes confusing syntax, as well as the novel’s patient setup, make for a slow start. But the story gathers momentum scene by scene, building to a convincing finish.

Starred review from March 1, 2015
Life turns brutally cruel for a farming family of three in 1940s Ireland in this sad, haunting novel from a writer with a gift for language and character. "It was the beginning of darkness" are the opening words, a telling phrase that also tells the time of day when Barnabas Kane and his hired hand, Matthew Peoples, rush from their fields at the signs of a fire. The building housing 43 cows is ablaze; Matthew would never have entered without the hand of Barnabas pushing him. So begins to swirl a maelstrom of unrelenting misfortune for the family Kane, the name echoing the Bible's first murderer. The family has scant capital and no insurance coming because Barnabas canceled it in a prideful moment. Seeking help among the community, he encounters suspicion that he had a hand in Matthew's death as well as the perverse rejection of anyone not born in and unmoved from the area (Barnabas is local but spent some years in New York before returning). Having done something sinful, Billy Kane, 14, fears he may have indirectly caused the fire to be set. Whether it was arson and who struck the match provide one thread of suspense. The other arises, as it can in the book of Job, from wondering what in God's name the devil will come up with next. Even Eskra Kane's bees are victims of slaughtering wasps that then assail her body and unhinge her mind. An accidental death also propelled Lynch's first novel (Red Sky in Morning, 2013, etc.), a blunter retribution tale that calls to mind the stark cruelty of Cormac McCarthy. With his second novel, Lynch has a Seamus Heaney ear for the sights and sounds of rural life, making his prose thick and jagged, sometimes ponderous and often evocative. Lynch evokes so many shades of guilt, pride, innocence, righteousness, and punishment that the book might help found a religion or maybe restore one's faith in a deity that could make a fine writer with one hand even if he unmade the Kanes with the other.

April 15, 2015
Lynch paints an excruciating portrait of a family's unraveling that is at once so starkly brutal and so beautiful that it is impossible to look away. Set in 1940s Ireland, this tragic tale revolves around the misfortunes of the Kane family, woe upon woes spiraling out in Job-like fashion after a devastating fire. With the cattle barn in flames, Barnabas Kane urges his farmhand, Matthew Peoples, into the blazing inferno. After Matthew's death, the locals are quick to blame Kane, who shoulders his own hefty share of guilt and remorse. No one in this aptly named family is spared the repercussions, as both Barnabas' wife and son seem to bear the biblical mark of Cain. A stunning tale of retribution and disintegration, not recommended for the faint of heart or those looking for an upbeat conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)