Review of OLD GOD'S TIME by Sebastian Barry

4.5 Stars 

Reading a Sebastian Barry novel is never disappointing.

This one is set in the mid-1990s on the Irish coast south of Dublin.  The protagonist is 66-year-old Tom Kettle, a retired police detective, living in a lean-to attached to a Victorian castle.  He has been retired for nine months when police officers appear on his doorstep to ask for help in a case concerning “’the fecking priests.’”  Charges of abuse against one priest have led to the re-opening of a cold case involving the murder of another priest.  This visit forces Tom to revisit the past, memories of which he has suppressed:  “What a thing to bring to your . . . door.  A new peril of cold cases that he had never foreseen.  Enough time goes by and it is as if old things never happened.  Things once fresh, immediate, terrible, receding away into old God’s time . . . He had been asked to reach back into memory, as if a person could truly do that.”

It is not long before the reader realizes that Tom is an unreliable narrator of his story, told in an accessible stream-of-conscious style.   He contradicts himself:  a painting has him thinking “of France and the French countryside, where he had never been” yet later we learn he had spent his honeymoon in France.  What happened on a mountain becomes important but “Could he every truly tell Jack Fleming what had happened on that mountain?  His embarrassment had partly been because he didn’t know, but must once have known, and might never know again.”  Just a few sentences later, Tom thinks, “He knew exactly what had happened, but he couldn’t tell Fleming any of it.” 

Grief-stricken, Tom’s mind veers into fantasy, a dream-world so lifelike that it’s difficult to separate his imaginings from reality.  He does see ghosts and unicorns, and it is obvious that some of what he experiences or remembers could not have actually happened.  Tom’s memories are unstable and the reader is left wondering which of his thoughts can be trusted.  The ending, in particular, will have the reader pondering what s/he has read. 

Tom is a character the reader cannot but love.  He is a kind, gentle man with a sense of humour.  He is willing to laugh at himself.  What also stands out is his love for his wife and his family.  His compassion and strong sense of justice cannot be ignored:  “To threaten a child, to bring hurt to a child, was the chief crime before God and man.  It must never go unpunished.”

Tom is also a damaged man.  He endured trauma as a child, in the army, and during his time as a policeman.  And then there are the personal losses he has experienced:  “Things happened to people, and some people were required to lift great weights that crushed you if you faltered just for a moment.  It was his job not to falter.  But every day he faltered.  Every day he was crushed, and rose again the following morn like a cartoon figure.  Road Runner, Bugs Bunny – crushed, yet recomposed.”  It becomes clear that he is also burdened by guilt and yearns to atone.  He wants his retirement “to be stationary, happy and useless” and that is what the reader wishes for him.

That peace does not seem possible when Tom has to once again face the covered-up crimes of the “empire of the Irish priesthood.”  The Catholic Church was aware of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests but did nothing.  Countless children suffered.  The novel portrays the generational impact of this abuse and shows people destroyed by it, entire families destroyed by it.  The lack of punishment adds to the trauma, though when justice seems to be delivered, it brings guilt, not peace; a weapon “in killing had not killed.  In exacting punishment had not punished.  In seeking to be the instrument of redemption had not redeemed.”

Amidst the novel’s grim subject matter and its sorrow, however, there is beauty:  the beauty of love and family and friendship.  Tom’s enduring love for his wife June is mentioned again and again; though he has been a widower for many years, he “cradled the memory of his wife as if she were still a living being.”  He knows “He had suffered like all human persons, but he had also been given immeasurable happiness.”  There is also the beauty of the Irish countryside which is described so vividly.

Anyone familiar with Barry’s writing will find more of his wonderful wordsmithing here.  The prose is lyrical, rich with wonderful metaphors and similes.  A meal of frankfurters and mash “lay in his belly like an early pregnancy”’ a necklace of red gems lies on a woman’s neck “like insects on the very point of dispersal”; staticky nylon bed sheets “were like an electric storm over Switzerland”; an abusive priest is a “filthy dark evil cold murderous vile creature with a penis for a soul”; and police reports Tom is reluctant to read “floated in his mind like squabs, flapping their wings, begging for attention.”

This book is moving and sometimes unbearably, heart-wrenchingly sad.  It is also amusing in parts and a wonderful tribute to enduring love and its ability to light up the darkness experienced during life’s difficulties.  I highly recommend it.