A quiet and contemplative novel from Sebastian Barry with a well fleshed out and depicted main character, Tom Kettle a former police officer.

Barry explore memory, regret and love wityh his usual deft hand and lyricism to produce a story that remaoins with the reader.

Wow, this book had me hooked from the first few pages. I was reading on the train to work smiling away at the wonderful writing.

Tom has just retired from the Garda and is now reflecting back on his love for his wife June. It’s told in a stream of consciousness, with some thoughts going off in tangents, and it seems that Tom may also be suffering with some early on-set dementia.

Tom’s love of June and his children soon captured my heart, which is what made it so hard when Tom’s story keeps on taking sadder turns. I’m not into misery books, and I did feel that there was one sad moment in the latter part of the book that was unnecessary for the story and I’d have preferred the book without that twist.

I started the book smiling on the train, and I stupidly read the last part of the book whilst waiting for a train and trying to hide my tears behind my sunglasses.

The book has a very clear voice for Tom and I imagine that this would make a fantastic book to listen to.

Stunning writing and I can see why it made the Booker long list.

The beauty of the words, the sentences, the paragraphs in this book is just indescribable. It is written like a song almost, each phrase worthy of stopping to take notice. The story so slowly unfolds and is so devastating, it will stay with me for quite some time.

“ He cradled the memory of his wife as if she were still a living being. As if no one had been crushed, no one had been hurried from the halls of life, and the power of his love could effect that, could hold her buoyant and eternal in the embrace of an ordinary day.”

I was not prepared for this. Not one bit. Abuse and murder, death and grief, love and loss. Not for the faint of heart. No euphemisms. No sugarcoating. I almost couldn’t bear to read it, but I couldn’t put it down.

That said, I was left with so many questions unanswered. I don’t typically enjoy an unreliable narrator, and I found myself frustrated often by Tom’s recollection of events, what was real and what wasn’t, whether it was his imagination, senile confusion, grief or ghosts. And it was almost unrelentingly bleak, hitting the reader with tragedy after tragedy, with some details almost gratuitously graphic. I am so conflicted.

It’s as brutal as it is beautiful, the story devastating, the writing sublime, but it left this reader broken, confused and unsure if I loved it or hated it.

"Things happened to people, and some people were required to lift great weights that crushed you if you faltered just for a moment."

"The tears of a little girl. The dry, cool face of his wife."

The thing is that Tom Kettle, Barry's protagonist is faltering a lot and the weight is almost obliterating him. He is on a rollercoaster of images some of which may be real, some of which not so.

Old God's Time means a period beyond memory and this is exactly what Barry plays with. He tells of dream like dips into the past, memories, fantasies, wishes all mixed up with a dose of reality. But he leaves us unsure what reality really is and with the feeling that we do not really want to know. Especially when reality is filled with present day hurts and inherited hurts both of which leave marks on our souls and on our loved ones.

Barry's words are replete with the imagery invoked, the castle, the ghosts, the haunted hurt children, cleaning, atonement. The world he creates full of light and dark conveys that eerie quality which left me unsure what I was reading which I think is his way of showing the effect of hurt on memory, how we remember or forget to survive continue.

An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley

Different type of crime fiction, with characters that are not all policemen.
Really enjoyed, found emotional at times but didn’t distract from the story

Absolutely stunning make a movie what a setting and a time. I can smell the house the clothes and the food. What a wonderful Irish classic hero. The writer is too Thankyou

Tom Kettle is a retired policeman living in Dalkey. Some former colleagues turn up to ask about and
old case and a young mother asks for his help. A beautifully written story. I will be reading more by Sebastian Barry.

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry

As I was reading this book, with great enjoyment and amazement, I was saying to myself - how am I ever going to review this? The whole book, although told in the third person, takes place inside the mind of Tom Kettle, a retired policeman. For most of the time he is sitting in a wicker armchair in his flat, which is inside a fake gothic castle in Dalkey. From his chair he can look out over the Irish sea, with its fishing boats and cormorant-inhabited island. He is widower, and his thoughts often turn to his beloved dead wife June and to his two adult children. He hardly ever sees anyone, so he is surprisingly pleased when he gets a visit from two former colleagues, Wilson and O’Casey. This is not just a social call, though - they have come to ask for his help on a case they’re investigating. What it is exactly we don’t find out at once, though Tom knows. Later we learn that a priest has been suspected of abuse for many years, but the powers that be in the church and the police have been covering it up and refusing to investigate. When the two detectives tell Tom that this case is connected with the murder, many years ago, of a priest known to associated with the current suspect, he reacts strongly: ‘Ah no, Jesus, no lads, not the fecking priests, no’. What he would have liked to say, but didn’t, was:

Jesus, go home, boys. You are bringing me back to I don't know where. The wretchedness of things. The filthy dark, the violence. Priests' hands. The silence ... Murder, you could murder, you could strike, you could stab, shoot, main, cut, because of that silence….He felt it now. Burning. The fullest humiliation of it felt afresh. Still present and correct, after all these years.

If you thought you were in for a conventional detective story, think again. Though Wilson and O’Casey reappear from time to time, it’s Tom’s memories and regrets that take centre stage. Like so many children of his generation he was abused by a Christian Brother, and June was repeatedly raped by a priest; the trauma has stayed with them both throughout their lives. Thinking about it all, Tom recognises the horror of it:

Many a soul put out like a candlewick in the sea of that lust. The ocean of lust pouring down on a little light, and never to travel again the bright breast of the earth, and come up again like a daisy, a bright yellow daisy of light, on the other side, as the gathering sunlight of a new morning. Quenched and obliterated.

The final result for June had been almost unbearably painful, though we don’t learn that until almost the end of the novel. There is hard reading here, hard but necessary. As for Tom, he has other trauma to deal with, again not revealed at first. What does become clear from early on is the unreliability of his memories and the trustworthiness of what he sees, or thinks he sees, in the world around him. Tom is well aware of this himself: ‘He was clearly going mad. But he had read somewhere that the truly mad would never know they were mad. He knew he was mad. Was that a proof of sanity?’

Certainly, then, this is a novel about abuse and trauma, but it’s also about love. Tom’s love for June shines with astonishing brightness throughout, and for all the years they had together kept their heads above the threatening waters of their desperately sad and shocking memories. The two children have also been bright lights in his life, although there are painful revelations to come there too - the trauma of their parents has somehow been transmitted to them too.

Barry’s writing, as always, carries exceptional beauty and power. He has confronted the iniquities of the Irish church before, in The Secret Scripture, but never with such compelling evidence. He has described a glimpse he once had on a visit to Dalkey with his mother, aged about seven, of an old man sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarillo as he looked out to sea. The vision stayed with him all his life and now, having reached the same age as Tom:

in a sense has allowed me – now at the same age that man was when I saw him myself – to sort of slip into his body and talk about a lot of things that have really bothered me as a grown person in my own life and as a citizen of this country. My aim is to love my country, and so to love it you have to know it well and maybe forgive it a few things.

This is a hard novel to do justice to. It’s deeply moving but also, believe it or not, wonderfully uplifting. I shall be reading it again.

Tom Kettle has recently retired from the police and is trying to adjust to his new way of life. When two former colleagues come to call with questions about an old case, Tom finds himself once again immersed in old memories and a past that still haunts him. Gradually that past is revealed to the reader and we too become haunted by it. This is a wonderful novel, perhaps even Barry’s best to date – and that’s saying something. It’s also one of his darkest ones – atmospheric, poignant, horrific at times, heart-breaking. Pitch-perfect prose, pitch-perfect dialogue, pitch-perfect characterisation and plot. Pretty much a perfect novel.

Sebastian Barry's latest novel 'Old God's Time' is another beautiful and fascinating read by an accomplished storyteller. Tom Kettle is a retired policeman, living in an apartment on the coastline south of Dublin. One day two former colleagues come to his door looking for information about a cold case. This unravels Tom's memory of days past, his wife and children. But can all of his memories be trusted? The story is beautiful but harrowing at the same time. It is about love, history, memories, family, child abuse by the Irish Catholic Church and justice.
A beautiful read which captures Dublin and the Dubliners and their dealing with history perfectly. A highly recommended book.
With many thanks to Faber & Faber and Netgalley for their ARC in return for an honest review.

The writing style wasn't for me. The story wasn't for me. I'm sure (as I have seen on GR) this book ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of people, unfortunately I am just not one of them.

A seriously tough read but superbly written.
The protagonist is a retired police officer and we meet him 9 months post retirement.
The story is largely him reflective on key moments/ relationships in his life. Based in Ireland it involves our bad heritage with priests and shows us how devastating this influence has been on individuals and their families.

This is trademark Barry almost at his best. It takes some getting into but is well worth the effort. As Irish Police investigate atrocities done by Catholic priests one retired Garda's life comes back to haunt him. The whole is very much like a haunting as the narrative moves backward and forward across Tom's memory of the past and his living of the present.

The narrative is at times harrowing and at others affirming of how hard the majority of humanity try to live their lives for the common good

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

As with all of Barry's novels the writing was beautiful. This author captures every moment and every feeling throughout the story giving the reader the feeling that they are along for the journey. Characterisation as always is perfect. I did find it quite dense at times but this did not detract from the beautiful story that it is. Highly recommend this book and author. If you have never read any of his books then I would advise to go and get as many as you can, you would not be disappointed.

It takes sometime to adjust to the somewhat dense style of writing by this Sebastian Barry. I had never read his books before. This one is a masterpiece of literary writing, which requires the reader's full attention. The time shifts and flashbacks, not to mention the character's own doubts about events, are confusing at first and several rereads of some sections were needed by me. The subject matter of abuse, emotional turmoil and suicide means that this is not an easy read. That said the descriptive language of human emotions, love, despair, loneliness and Irish life was exquisite and very poignant. It was difficult to get the real measure of Tom Kettle, the main character, because everything in the text depended on his own self-confessed, unreliable memory. The horror of the lives of many damaged children and adults in catholic Ireland is now well documented, but how Tom's mind deals with his own life that follows is a true saga with a gut wrenching end.

This exquisite novel is told through Tom’s thoughts. Tom is a retired Irish police officer who has had a life of tragedy. As he relates the story of his life, the reader wonders what is true and what is imagined. It’s a novel about the results of abuse and parts are difficult to read. The investigation of a cold case by his former colleague brings the story to light but only in Tom’s mind. The reader finally learns the truth.

Old Gods Time is an expression meaning a period beyond memory. In this novel an ex-police detective in rural Ireland, Tom Kettle, is approached to solve a cold case which reawakens recent family history. Tom recollects his wife June and family Winnie and Joe. His grief and love playing tricks on him as he reflects on the ‘sad stations’ of memory.

Throughout the novel Tom and the reader are unsure as to what is real. ‘He had the wild sense that despite the tyranny of dates and time, she was there, not in memory but really’.

The novel has a haunting, ethereal quality. The visiting policemen are given an ‘inky halo’, there is a ghostly girl and even the ‘sea wind [is] out of control, like a suicide or an executed thing’.

This is a beautifully crafted sorry of family and loss.

Thanks to Netgalley and Faber for a review copy.

In Old God’s Time, we walk alongside Tom Kettle, a retired Detective Garda. We stand beside him, while he works through how life has brought him to this point, and his musings of what is left for him, if anything, in a future.

Sebastian Barry’s writing takes us on a meandering, far from easy journey. A journey of Tom’s life, loves and losses, the happiness and sadness. It is a tale of loss, aging, of losing relevance in a world hellbent on modernisation and progress.

Through the lens of Tom’s recollections/flashbacks/imagination, not only do we see his own personal history, from childhood to retirement; we also live through some of Ireland’s troubling, uneasy history, interwoven through Tom’s own life. These subjects are not easy to talk and read of.
I appreciate trigger warnings are a big debate within reviewing circles, but I wouldn’t feel it fair to write this review without giving a trigger warning for child abuse by Catholic priests. I’m sorry if this is seen as a spoiler, but I think it’s right to mention it.

As a narrator, Tom is unreliable. The lines between fact and fiction, the present and past are constantly shifting in and out of focus. I’m currently still questioning what was genuine reality, and what was Tom’s reality.

The writing, and the story is harrowing, haunting, tragic in a lyrical stye. It is somehow beautiful, and distressing all at once.
Despite the author’s poetic writing, and Tom’s rose tinted lens of memory; the subject matter, and the far reaching brutal effects of those acts, cant’t be disguised.

A book to get lost in, the writing is beautiful. As Tom's past unfolds, alongside the investigation into an historical case, you are walking in his shoes. Not always comfortable ones. He lays bare the terrifying abuse that children were subjected to by clergy and the authorities efforts to ignore or cover it up. The descriptions of the surroundings are so vivid, you can picture yourself at the seaside where Tom lives. Left me with much to reflect on after reading, highly recommend.