Book Club:  Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry

For November, we have a book that was published in 2023 and was longlisted in that year for the Booker prize. It ranked as a top ten novel in the Sunday Times bestseller list.

Tom Kettle is a retired policeman living among the Gothic wilds of the Irish coast in a lean-to attached to a Victorian castle. He’s “the orphan of his former happiness”: his wife and two children are dead, leaving him isolated and confused.

Old God’s Time is in part a tale of unstable memories and the difficulty in telling your story as it disappears “into old God’s time,” as well as a tribute to enduring love and its ability to light up the dark. Kettle’s solitude is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. It’s a case that Tom had never quite come to terms with. The facts of Kettle’s former life become increasingly hazy, allowing for suggestive, symbolic imagery. Kettle’s nine months of retirement are likened to a pregnancy.

Sebastian Barry (born 1955) is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He was named Laureate for Irish Fiction, 2018–2021. He’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Critics have called him one of Ireland’s most accomplished novelists, with a distinctive place in contemporary Irish culture.

This novel was kindly suggested to us by Kathy.