The Butchers by Ruth Gilligan. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
Opening with a mysterious photograph of a man hanging from meat hooks displayed on a gallery wall in New York for the first time since it was taken twenty years ago, The Butchers takes us back to rural Ireland in 1996 as the BSE crisis takes hold.
The Butchers are a group of men who travel the country slaughtering cows by hand following an ancient tradition brought on by a curse. Each year fewer people continue in the old ways.
Set in the pre-Belfast Agreement border counties of Cavan and Monaghan, the outbreak of BSE in England initially provides money-making opportunities for people who are willing to blur the lines between legal and illegal. When cases of BSE are diagnosed in Ireland, the already struggling Butchers face even more scepticism.
Told from four perspectives, the novel shifts between Grá, the wife of a Butcher, and her daughter Úna. We also follow Fionn, a believer of the tradition, whose wife is dying, and their son Davey.
Gilligan has written a richly layered, atmospheric, and complex exploration of folklore, traditions versus modernity, familial bonds, teenagehood, love, loss, longing, and belonging. There are elements of the story that don’t quite come together, nonetheless, The Butchers is an intriguing novel that is impressive in its scope.
The Butchers by Ruth Gilligan is published by Atlantic Books and is available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.
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