Review of Time of the Child by Niall Williams

Time of the Child feels like poetry in prose form, and Williams richly shapes a small-town Irish community's everyday and extraordinary events in this poignant, gorgeous literary fiction novel.

In 1962 in the small Irish town of Faha, it's Christmastime, and Dr. Jack Troy and his oldest daughter Ronnie are coping with complicated family dynamics in their drafty, rural Irish home when an unexpected discovery turns everything upside down.

Ronnie, a single and dutiful daughter, has grown up in the shadow of her father, who has long been set apart from the community where he was born and grew up because of his role as the area's physician. She is capable and smart, and assists at the front desk in his in-home clinic, but she feels she has more to give. Her books, secret writing of stories and accounts, and daily cycling trips around the area aren't fulfilling her anymore.

Ronnie once kept company with a young man who's now living in America--but her father disapproved, and now it seems she will live in Faha forever. Unbeknownst to Ronnie (she and her father live together but rarely communicate) her father is feeling remorse about his reserve regarding the young man. He's also bemoaning his own chance at love; as a widower he worked with Annie Mooney at the pharmacy, but never told her about his feelings for her before Annie died.

During the annual, chaotic community fair preceding this holidays, which this year is a rainy business full of haggling, disappointments, and triumphs, an infant is left by the church gates. Young Jude and Faha's grown twins, Tim and Tom, bring the baby girl to Dr. Troy and Ronnie, believing her dead but not sure what else to do. And she does seem to have passed on to another realm, until Dr. Troy is able to revive her. In an impulsive pact, the four men agree not to share the news of the baby with anyone.

Meanwhile Ronnie quickly falls in love with the infant girl, who she begins to call Noelle, and Jack opens his heart with the same devotion to the baby. As weeks go on the two of them care for her and go to extremes to try to keep Noelle's existence a secret. When her presence is revealed, they form desperate plans to keep her. But an unwed mother in that time and place has little chance of keeping a child once the Church has a hold of it.

What really shines in Time of the Child is the power of the small-town Faha community--gossipy and desperate for dirt as its citizens may largely be. The miracle of unity brought about by a baby's presence is poignant without feeling too easy. This story is beautiful and powerful.

Williams's writing feels like a poem in prose structure; no word is wasted, and I read this novel slowly in order to savor the world the author so gorgeously created.

More Irish story love

Time of the Child is set in the same village as Williams's novel This Is Happiness.

You can find Bossy reviews of other novels set in Ireland here and more reviews of literary fiction titles here.