A review by sarahvernall
Famine by Liam O'Flaherty

5.0

A work of almost perfection, both as an example of the novel form and as an exploration of how sustained poverty and desperation drag people down and degrade them, on both a community and individual level. If Jocelyn Chadwick seems a little cartoonish as a villain, then Mary Gleeson Kilmartin is a beautifully nuanced and developed protagonist. The definitive famine novel.