Old God's Time

October 1, 2022

Living in a lean-to snuggled up against a white Victorian Castle in seaside Dalkey, Ireland, retired policeman Tom Kettle leads an uninterrupted existence until two former colleagues show up, pumping him about a decades-old case he would rather forget. Then there's the troubled young mother who moves in next door, reminding Tom of his own lost family. From two-time Costa winner and two-time Booker short-listed Barry.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 2, 2023
In the knotty latest from Barry (A Thousand Moons), a retired police officer’s solitude is disrupted by a decades-old case involving sexually abusive priests. Tom Kettle, 66, has been off work for nine months and is living on the property of a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea when two detectives arrive asking about the priests. Kettle spurns their questions, but after they leave, his mind is frazzled. He thinks his daughter has visited, then remembers both of his children are dead, along with his wife, June, whose memory he “cradled... as if she were still a living being.” Distraught, he attempts suicide but is interrupted when the police chief arrives to request his help with the case. It turns out one of the priests died long ago, and the police are interested in what Tom knows. As he begins cooperating, he remembers that June told him she was raped as a young orphan by a priest. Tom’s struggle with his failing memory makes the gradual reveals about June and their children all the more unsettling, and the mystery of his connection to the case involving the priests all the more intriguing. The gorgeous writing and unreliable narration make it hard to put down this rewarding take on love and grief. Agent: Natasha Fairweather, RCW.

February 15, 2023
His attempted retirement upended by the reopening of an old murder case, a troubled detective clings to memories of love. Alone in a shack overlooking the turbulent Irish Sea, Tom Kettle tries not to have any thoughts. In this he is unsuccessful. The ghosts of his beloved wife, June, and their two grown children, all three now dead, persist. Police officers from the old station, investigating a new lead into the death of a monstrous priest, pay Tom a visit. They want his professional perspective but also a sample of his DNA. Tom's tenuous hold on reality, tethered to minor routine and the rhythms of an unattached pensioner, gives way to dreamlike reveries of longing and loss. His days fill themselves with the humiliations of aging and the interventions of the dead. Barry (A Thousand Moons, 2020) masterfully explores the "deep deep chaos" of Tom's perforated soul with poetry, poignancy, and a splash of indignant rage. The classic crime-story chestnut--a mothballed cop yanked back into action--becomes a parable of grief and theological anguish, a contemporary Irish answer to the book of Job.

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Starred review from January 1, 2023

In this latest from Costa-winning, two-time Booker Prize finalist Barry (Days Without End), Tom Kettle's quiet seaside existence, nine months into his retirement from the police force, is upended by a knock on the door. Two young detectives from his old squad have come to consult on a cold case regarding the death of a priest, on which Tom and his former partner were the lead investigators. A subsequent visit from the police chief, his former colleague, indicates that Tom may be more of a suspect than a collaborator. As the mystery unfolds, secrets and ghosts come to haunt him. Having been raised and abused in a Catholic orphanage, he eventually found happiness with an adored wife, herself an orphanage survivor. But his years as a husband and father are behind him as he struggles with an unreliable memory to uncover the past and to help a troubled neighbor escape her violent husband. VERDICT Admirers of Claire Keegan and Niall Williams will appreciate the Irish humor that masks deep sorrow. This novel's words are well chosen, the sentences dazzle, and they all come together in a beautifully told, piercingly sad story.--Barbara Love

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2023
This complex quasi-mystery centers on a former cop's reckoning with the damage caused by sexually abusive priests. The narrator is Tom Kettle, a 66-year-old widower living in Dalkey, Ireland. He's nine months into retirement from a decorated career with the Dublin police when two Garda officers ask him to look at reports from an old unsolved murder case he worked on years earlier. A priest under investigation for pedophilia has made disturbing accusations regarding the murderer. Kettle, whose wife and two adult children suffered brutal deaths in the previous 10 years, is already coping with too many memories, unwanted and otherwise. Much of the narrative is a very accessible stream of consciousness. Even as Kettle's mind drifts, he also must deal with the hard realities that arise from police procedure, like evidence gathering, interviews at headquarters, and the suspicions of his former boss. The unsolved case crucially turns his thoughts to the first night of his honeymoon and his wife's "sorrowful revelations" of childhood abuse: "The rapes, the bloody priests." It's her abuser who was murdered. The novel avoids any pat responses to questions of crime and punishment, although even the dutiful cop in Kettle leans toward rough justice where the young are involved. Barry is a resourceful Irish writer with a gift for empathy and lyrical prose. Many of his novels weave Irish immigrants into the broader tapestry of global history in the past two centuries. But Kettle's story hinges on domestic events, on years of priests' sexual abuse of children in Ireland. Barry's tight focus on one retired lawman and the ghosts bedeviling him provides a compelling sense of the misery the Catholic Church knew it was causing and failed to salve. An eloquent, affecting take on pedophilia.

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