![]() ![]() Setting sail from the monastery Cluain Mhic Nóis in Offaly, the three monks sail down the Shannon in a boat, leaving most of their provisions behind at Artt’s insistence. When his two charges, monks Cormac and Trian, timidly appeal this death knell, Artt’s response has the hallmark reductionism of any good tyrannical leader: “God will provide.”Įmma Donoghue’s new novel, Haven, is a tremendously real imagining of the experiences of the first three people to land on Skellig Michael in about AD 600. Picture the scene: seventh-century Ireland, three men alone on an island off the west coast, winter coming in, rations depleted, birds gone south, no equipment to fish and constant hunger, which will bring, imminently, the promise of starvation and death.īut wait, there’s a boat! An easy way to reach the mainland, to barter for goods, to bring back enough grain to last the winter, if only the leader of the trio wasn’t a hardline religious fanatic, Prior Artt, who has decided, after a vision from God (aka a dream), that the men must never leave the island, that work and prayer alone will see them through. ![]()
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