Sebastian Barry’s novel, Old God’s Time, was on the longlist for the Booker Prize for 2023 along with several other works by Irish writers, including the winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Last month I wrote about the magnificent novel, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and I have just finished Colm Toibin’s latest work, Long Island. I will restrict myself from writing about all these Irish novels and focus this time on Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time.
Old God’s Time is an extraordinary literary novel, extraordinary for its concise lyrical language, its emotional punch, and its everyman protagonist. Tom Kettle is a retired Detective Sergeant in the Garda. A knock on the door interrupts his first nine months of quiet retirement. Tom has been expecting the police to call. He learns he has become a person of interest in the investigation of a priest’s murder.
Sebastian Barry does a masterful job of withholding the truth about the incident in question. A series of hints inserted from the beginning of the novel represent the partial return of Tom’s memories of the crime and his emotions surrounding it.
Tom Kettle is an everyman figure in that he has suffered much loss and grief in his life but also great happiness. These feelings sit side by side as he tries to recollect memories he has repressed. During the story, Tom emerges slowly from his solitude to embrace contact with his neighbours and the police officers investigating his case. His concern for the new people in his life combines with everything we know about Tom Kettle to lead to the climax of the book, something that challenges our ideas of justice and atonement.
I re-read this slim but dense volume immediately. The beauty of the language and the carefully placed hints about what happened in the cold-case crime were too overwhelming to take in on my first read. I found the second reading as compelling as the first. It left me with a great admiration for the author and his skilful construction of such a heart-breaking and ultimately uplifting novel.
