Old God's Time

Description

There were no saints in any era, Tom knew, just good men and bad, and sometimes both in the one bottle. Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home, a lean toannexed to a white Victorian Castle in Dalkey overlooking the sea. Formonths he has barely seen a soul, but his peace is interrupted when twoformer colleagues turn up at his door to ask questions about a decades-oldcase. A traumatic case which Tom never quite came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother and family who move innext door, a woman on the run from her own troubles. And what of Tom'sfamily, his wife June and their two children? A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is not quite what it seems, OldGod's Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what willsurvive of us. 'Few can write like Sebastian Barry, there is a real thrill as each sentence unfolds. Old God's Time is a portrait of a good man facing the failings of his past. It is wonderfully alive because Barry is so attuned to the human condition, to the poetry in ordinary lives. Full of love and grief and heartache, this is an unforgettable novel from one of our finest writers.' - Douglas Stuart 'His work reminds us how much we need these rare gifts of the naturalstoryteller.' - Tessa Hadley 'Barry is the laureate of empathy.' - Sunday Independent 'Sebastian Barry faces down the most challenging of subjects with an unflinching pen, using blood for ink. Yet at its heart, Old God's Time is also a love story, of two souls bonded by trauma. Narrated by a retired guard who begins to lose control of his fragile senses as his past clashes with the present, it is shocking, stunning and extraordinarily brave. Barry has once again written a character for the ages.' - Liz Nugent

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. The currentLaureate for Irish Fiction, his novels have twice won theCosta Book of the Year award, the Independent BooksellersAward and the Walter Scott Prize. He had two consecutivenovels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, A Long LongWay (2005) and the top ten bestseller The Secret Scripture(2008), and has also won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the JamesTait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in County Wicklow.