The story of Faha continues. I was honoured to have the opportunity to read this ARC. I loved this story and the characters we followed.

It put me in the holiday spirit even in the middle of June. I would love to see this story continue on. Niall Williams is a brilliant author.

Faha is a fictional village in Ireland — in the civil parish of
Feakle, but in the Roman Catholic Parish of Caher Feakle, also called Killinena.
“Time of the Child” it’s written in memoir style and focuses on the locals, including 17 year old Noel Crowe, who has left the priesthood training to live with his grandparents and Christy, an elderly man who becomes a boarder with Noel’s grandparents.
The story is narrated through
Noel’s memories of his teenage years and explorers, the village’s church, music, theater, and pub.

“This is what happened in faha over Christmas of 1962, and what became known in the parish as a time of the child.
To those who live there , faha was perhaps the last place on earth to expect a miracle. It had neither the history nor the geography for it”.

“Real change is often only seen in hindsight. If you took a wrong turn and came into faha that Sunday morning, you would see a village like many others in the country, paused for mass, a mournful rain coming a small ways inside the open doors of Bourke’s and Clohessy’s, but no customers until the bell for Communion, when the tongues of the registers would be out once more”.

I had a very hard time connecting with this story.
Chalk it up to ‘me’ — not Niall Williams. He’s a beautiful skilled writer.
I usually love his books — novels and memoirs..
but I just struggled too much to stay interested.

3 stars — not lower - because Niall Williams just can’t write poorly….
It’s not his fault I struggled. I was simply the wrong reader for ‘this’ novel. Yet — I’ll read him
Again.