The first thing you need to know about Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time is that it was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Almost by definition then, Old God's Time is a seriously literary novel despite it also being a crime novel. Too, the novel can be confusing at times because everything the reader sees, past or present, is first heavily filtered through the mind of a recently retired Irish police detective whose memories are not nearly as reliable as they once may have been.
Tom Kettle has enjoyed nine months of retirement by the time two young detectives come knocking on his door to ask about a reopened case involving the murder of a child-molesting priest that occurred several years earlier. Tom knows that his memory is failing, but this particular case forces him to sort through the horrors of his own childhood. Himself raised in an orphanage run by the Christian Brothers, Tom's earliest memories include the beatings and sexual abuse he suffered there. And as fate would have it, Tom's wife suffered through the same kind of childhood.
Despite not yet being an official suspect in the priest's murder, Tom is smart enough to realize that he may be headed in that direction if he can't explain his past actions to investigators. But how will he ever be able to do that when he himself is so unsure of what really happened on the day the pervert priest died?
Seldom have I read a novel with a first person narrator as confused as the one in Old God's World. Tom Kettle often struggles with reality, even conversing with "ghosts" on occasion, but he always works hard to distinguish between fact and false memories. Layer by layer, he reveals his past to the reader, and little by little the reader begins to understand who Tom Kettle really is - and why he is the way he is. Old God's World is a vivid indictment of those who for reasons of their own fail to expose child molesters in their midst - and the thousands of lives they help destroy in the process of their longterm cover-ups.
Not always easy to read, Old God's World is most definitely worth the extra effort involved.
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| Sebastian Barry jacket photo |
I would definitely like to read this; maybe sometime next year. A confused first person narrator sounds challenging.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely challenging for me, Tracy. It made me think of a couple of plot variations on this theme that I wish someone should write - if it hasn't already been done. (Can't tell you what those are without spoiling this one, though.)
DeleteProbably not the book for me, but I'm glad you liked it.
ReplyDeleteFirst book in my new Booker Prize self-challenge, Lark. I'll post more about that on Sunday.
DeleteYeah it's a sad story -- poor Tom Kettle's family. He is a mixed up character and he keeps the reader off balance. I wasn't too into the priest angle ... but Barry's a good enough writer that he's able to pull it off. Did you read his novel Days Without End? It has a little drag to it but is worth it too.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Days without End...but it's going on the list for taking a closer look at, thanks. The Kettle family just never stood a chance, it seems, having sprung from two such damaged parents. I still think about this novel, and it continues to make more and more sense to me. The whole priest thing is always disturbing to me, but it was so out of hand in Ireland that I can't begin to imagine how that whole country is still not scarred by the experience.
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