Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

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.

This is a fantastic book by a really interesting Irish writer dealing with the BSE crisis in Ireland. Yes, you read that right! Focusing on a group of men called The Butchers, who travel around Ireland slaughtering animals as per ancient traditions, this is a real thrill of a book told from different viewpoints and nicely bookended with a satisfying whodunnit

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

A fascinating tale of mythology, nationhood and cows, disappointed by its execution. The Butchers are eight men who spend the year travelling around Ireland ritually slaughtering cattle collectively, in compliance with a folkloric curse by a widow who lost her husband and seven sons. To these men and their families, Ireland is divided between the believers - who adhere to these traditions and invite the Butchers into their farms - and the rest of society - Catholic, mocking, working in big agriculture - who see them as the antithesis to modernising, post-Troubles Ireland. Then one of the slaughterers is found slaughtered, hanging by his feet in a cold storage. The book intriguingly ties together pagan belief and corporate farming, Mad Cow Disease and antagonism towards the British, and the stories of women trapped in this masculine world who dream of escape. It uses cattle to quietly ask what sort of country Ireland should be. Whilst it is let down by its often clumsy and overstated writing, I still finished it in an evening.

I just didn't get on with this book as well as I'd hoped. I enjoyed the setting and the mysticism around the titular Butchers, but the focus of the story moved too far away from that for my liking. The central mystery about the death of the butcher and the picture of it (mentioned in the opening so a very minor spoiler) was a great hook, but the interweaving plots around it lacked the same appeal.

The book focuses on two main stories, the wife and daughter of one of the Butchers, left behind as he makes his trips around the farms, and a father and son whose relationship has broken down. I don't want to give away any details for those who might want to read the book, but while the first was a good story, the second felt ultimately unsatisfying to me.

It's perhaps bad form to criticise a book for not being the book I wanted it to be, rather than for it's actual content, but I had requested an advance reading copy based on the synopsis, and the synopsis covered only a small portion of the book, the rest of it leaving me a bit cold.

Ruth Gilligan's The Butchers is a must read. I am a fan of Irish literature and Gilligan's work is amongst the most hotly anticipated this year. I inhaled it and have been recommending it to everybody. The theme of borders is as pertinent now as ever. Really fantastic.

The Butchers is a very clever, gripping read which I think would make a great book club read as there would be lots to discuss.

I think I can safely say that I have never read another book about butchery so I found it very interesting to learn more about it, particularly all the old myths and traditions surrounding it. I’d also never heard of The Irish Mafia before so that was a bit of an eye opener! I’m actually old enough to have lived through the BSE crisis and I remember well the panic over it, especially as everyone went vegetarian for a few months. I knew that it had a huge impact on farmers but had never had the opportunity to hear about the crisis from their point of view before. It was actually quite poignant to see how much it affected them and not just from a monetary point of view.

The author does a great job of setting the scene in this book so that the reader feels transported back to 1996. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me at times with all the great pop references and news events that I remember happening. Ireland was going through quite a transitional period at that time and I found it interesting to see the struggle between the traditional views, involving religion and gender, with their attempts of modernisation.

Overall I thought this was a well plotted, atmospheric read which I found very hard to put down. I loved the slow revealing of all the secrets and the twists which took me completely by surprise. The change in point of view helped keep the story fresh and kept my interest as it always revealed something new. My only slight quibble with this book is in not sure I’d class it as historical fiction as I think its too recent. I’ve been wracking my brain to think what I’d call it and I agree with a few other reviewers that I think it’s more of a coming of age story. Either way it’s still an incredibly good read!

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Atlantic books for my copy of this book.

"Grá had hated the words - had hated herself for saying them - though that didn't mean they were any less true. Because these would always be their bodies; those would always be the rules. She knew now that breaking them only made the pain worse."

The Butchers are a group of 8 men, descended from an old tradition, who travel around Ireland slaughtering cattle of their believers by hand. It's 1996, the BSE crisis is unfolding and modern Ireland is growing distrustful of the Butchers' ancient traditions. Grá is the wife of a Butcher waiting for her husband to return, and their 12 year old daughter Úna has a secret plan to become a Butcher when she grows up. There's also Eileen, Grá's sister, who exiled herself from the family and faith when she was young - and her son Davey now has a keen interest in the Butchers who are currently staying in their town.

When one of the Butchers is found dead in a slaughterhouse, no one can figure out who did it or why. It isn't until twenty years later, when a previously unseen photograph goes on display in a gallery in America, that the truth begins to unravel. It is a picture of the Butcher who died, hanging from a meat hook in the slaughterhouse...

The Butchers is a gripping tale of folklore and ritual, of family and what it means to be a woman. It's very hard to write a review of this, as I don't want to give too much away. The beauty of the book is how it unfolds and keeps you guessing. I loved it.

Ruth Gilligan’s fifth novel, The Butchers, is set in rural Ireland in the summer of 1996, as the BSE crisis kicks off and Irish farmers initially benefit from the collapse in British beef. It moves between four third-person narrators plus a series of interludes set in New York in 2018, where a photographer is about to exhibit a photograph of a dead man that was taken in an Irish slaughterhouse decades before. Grá is the wife of one of the eight Butchers, a group of men who move around the country slaughtering cattle in accordance with their own particular rites. Úna, her twelve-year-old daughter, dreams of becoming a Butcher herself someday, despite the fact that the order is closed to girls. In another county, Fionn, desperate to raise money for experimental cancer treatment for his dying wife, becomes involved in smuggling cows over the Irish border. Meanwhile, his son, Davey, is focusing on his Leaving Cert exams, determined to depart for the bright lights of Dublin, when he falls unexpectedly in love with somebody he’s just met.

I seem to have been looking for a farming novel that uses Celtic folklore this adeptly for some time; I was disappointed by Owen Sheers’ uneven novella White Ravens, which is Welsh rather than Irish, but which echoes The Butchers in its depiction of a woman who watches her brothers get involved in sheep-stealing after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease leads to the shooting of their own flock. However, despite the thematic echoes, the robustness of Gilligan’s prose is closer to writers like Fiona Mozley and Cynan Jones. All four of her narrators are completely convincing, but I was especially captivated by Fionn’s descriptions of swapping tags on cattle and printing new stamps on packets of beef in the depths of night. Gilligan treads a fine line with his characterisation, making him admit to ‘raising a fist’ to his wife and son just once, many years ago, but knowing he can never make things right; giving him a history of alcoholism but showing how religiously he now sticks to pints of coke; making him want to impress his fellow smugglers to demonstrate his masculinity but also emphasising that he is motivated by the thin prospect of saving his wife’s life.

The Butchers, by leaping from protagonist to protagonist, also deliberately elides or skips a number of climatic moments in its plot, such as the peak of a bar brawl or Davey’s first sexual encounter. This vignette-like approach worked for me, twisting this undoubtedly gripping story away from becoming a straightforward thriller and giving the more subtle scenes space to breathe. Gilligan also makes effective use of her setting, skilfully contextualising BSE for readers who are unfamiliar with it, and dropping references to Euro 96 and the Spice Girls while never slipping into gratuitous nostalgia. Having requested this on NetGalley some months ago, and noticing that its publication date was approaching, I started this novel out of a sense of duty; but it’s an unexpected, original and accomplished treat.

I write this review just having finished Ruth Gilligan's The Butchers, which I had requested from Netgalley after hearing high praise for the title and for Gilligan's previous novel, Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan. It is a completely original novel, told from multiple unreliable perspectives, mostly set in rural Cavan and Monaghan in 1996, though there are brief interludes set in present day New York, where a photographer exhibits his much praised and mysterious shot of a dead man hanging in a barn. We are told that he is one of a long line of Butchers, a group of eight men who travel Ireland slaughtering cattle for those who still believe in an ancient widow's curse that makes other meat unsafe to eat. We hear about the butchers from the wife of one of the men and their daughter, both left behind eleven months the year, from a desparate man with a sick wife trying to make what money he can in a projected boom now that mad cow disease is rife in Britain, and from his misfit son.
What is really interesting is how Gillligan situates her alternative world and tradition in real history. We see McDonalds coming to rural Ireland, the beginning of the end of the troubles, a fraught relationship with the border that seems all the more relavent today, and a preoccupation with a coming plague that is ridiculously relevant, considering it was released during lockdown. We also hear of the rise in popularity of the Spice Girls and hints of decrimilization of homosexuality and divorce. This Ireland is becoming more modern while it begins to shed some ties to religion: though whether you are Catholic or Protestant is still of utmost importance, the characters in this novel are eager to turn their backs on those who still believe in the widow's curse and the way of The Butchers. Young Una, the Butcher's daughter, is ferocious in her ambitions to become just like her father, though is an outcast in her school for her different beliefs. Her mother is treated with suspicion and harbours a secret about an estranged sister who "broke free" many years ago. Gilligan's strange allegorical novel suggests the ways in which smaller religious and ethnic groups were and still are marginalised. Irish Travellers spring to mind at some parts, other world religions or even paganism seem more likely at others. Either way, themes of belonging and unbelonging, trust and betrayal, lonliness and comfort are as universal as they are parochial and of their time.
While I didn't race to turn every page, perhaps due to my being somewhat distracted at the moment, The Butchers is still an interesting read and one worth picking up - certainly it is one I would like to discuss once people have read it!

This was an interesting story and I liked how it explored an area of Irish culture and history we normally don't get to see but I just did not connect with the writing style and this made it hard for me to push through and try to read this book.

1990s Ireland. BSE crisis.
This genre-defying novel is Gilligan's best yet. An excellent multi-viewpoint novel.

There is A LOT in this book: family ties, shared histories, compelling characters and a central thread of mystery.

In particular, I appreciated the character of Una and enjoyed watching her grow throughout the book. I was most drawn to the story of her and her parents.

I don't want to give away much about the book as I think it's best enjoyed with an open mind.
I personally found this book to be un-put-downable and I'd highly recommend it. 4 stars.

I think it is perfect for fans of:
Historical fiction
Irish literature
Folklore
Books about family relationships


Content warning: knives, blood, violence (including gender-based violence)

This is a fascinating story in rural Ireland in 1996. I rooted for these characters, their lifestyle, and was definitely absorbed by the story. Great writing, totally immersive.

Definitely recommended.
Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

Wow! A fascinating story set in rural Ireland in 1996. I loved the characters of the mother and daughter, Gra and Una, on the cusp of Ireland's modernisation, but still trapped by their old beliefs. Their husband/ father is a member of the Butchers, a group of 8 men that satisfy an old ritual by slaughtering cattle in a particular style, which takes him away from home for most of the year. Both Gra and Una are struggling to come to terms with this, and we find out more about life at school and at home for them. It was very well written and I couldn't put it down. It reflects that changes going on in Ireland at the time, particularly about religion and gender, against the background of the BSE crisis. It was very believable. The only aspect I did not enjoy so much as the flash forwards to 2018, where a photographer who played a part in the events meets Una later. However, these did tie up the plot well.

How far back in the past should a novel take us for it to be considered “historical fiction”? Ruth Gilligan’s The Butchers is set in the rural borderlands of Ireland in 1996, at a time when a widespread outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as “mad cow disease”, was threatening to scupper the British, and then, eventually, the Irish beef industry. That was less than three decades ago, and yet it already seems a different era, one which Gilligan accurately and authentically evokes through contemporary references: Euro 1996 football games were showing on TV, the Spice Girls were assailing the charts, recent legislative enactments had decriminalized homosexuality and just introduced divorce.

The Butchers is grounded in the reality of living in Ireland in the 90s, but, strikingly, it is also built on a supernatural or mythological premise referring to a curse supposedly lain on Ireland by a “farmer’s widow” of olden times:

... since the war had claimed all eight of her men She decreed, henceforth, no man could slaughter alone; Instead, seven others had to be by his side to stop the memory of her grief from dying too...

According to the ancient Irish custom, there had to be eight men present at every cattle slaughter; eight different hands touching the animal’s hide as it passed from this life to the next. So now eight Butchers spent eleven months of the year calling on the few families around the country who still believed, and killing their beasts in the traditional, curse-abiding way...

The novel revolves around a number of characters who are, in some way or another, connected to the Butchers or their beliefs. There’s Grá, the long-suffering wife of one of the Eight, and her twelve-year old daughter Úna; there’s Fionn, a small-time farmer with demons in his past and a wife with a debilitating tumour; there’s Fionn’s teenage son Davey, who has heard of the Butchers from his mother and wants her to meet them to satisfy her dying wish.

In the brave new world of 1996 Ireland, the Butchers seem increasingly out of place and, as the BSE crisis escalates they are also viewed with suspicion by the non-believers. So when one of the Eight is found dead in a slaughterhouse, hanging by his feet on a meat hook suspended from the ceiling, the Butchers feel it is time for them to quit. Úna’s dreams of following in her father’s footsteps seem shattered… Or perhaps not. Twenty-two years after these calamitous events, a photograph appears on a New York gallery wall showing the Butcher’s hanging body. How has it ended up there and what fresh light will it shed on this “cold case”? It will be up to Úna to solve the mystery and avenge the man’s death.

The Butchers is, first and foremost, a great story, brilliantly told. It is tautly plotted, revealing its secrets in unexpected twists. The frequent changes in points of view introduce variety and keep up the momentum. It’s been some time since I read such a page turner.

But this is just one aspect of this book. It is, in fact, a novel of many parts, combining as it does a generally realistic storyline with elements of supernatural and crime fiction. Davey’s studies of classical mythology also serve as an excuse to introduce a symbolical subtext where references to myths reflect certain plot elements (to be honest, I found this to be rather heavy-handed and the least appealing ingredient in the book)

However, if I were pressed to pigeon-hole this genre-bending book, I would say it strikes me as primarily a coming-of-age novel. We see Úna growing up as a rebel against the patriarchal expectations of society; Davey coming to terms with his identity and sexuality; their parents questioning the choices they made when they were their children’s age. Equally importantly, this is a novel about the coming of age of a nation: contemporary Ireland. Gilligan’s portrayal of this rapidly changing country is deliciously ambivalent. Whilst on the one hand new civil rights were being introduced, and this is positively portrayed in the novel, the country was also being overwhelmed by a capitalist culture where money ruled, connections between politics and business were the order of the day and traditions were being forgotten.

Several recent novels have used folklore and the otherworldly to address present-day themes. This might explain, for instance, why witches have become such a potent and frequent feminist symbol in contemporary fiction. With its nods to the supernatural, The Butchers could be seen as the latest addition to this phenomenon – but it certainly stands out both in ideas and in their execution.