TIME OF THE CHILD

In a small Irish town, the local doctor deals with the very young, the very old, and the possibility that he’s ruined his daughter’s life.

“To those who lived there, Faha was perhaps the last place on earth to expect a miracle. It had neither the history nor the geography for it. The history was remarkable for the one fact upon which all commentators agreed: nothing happened here.” Well, they are wrong about that. This sequel to Williams’ much-loved This Is Happiness (2019) is set in the same town several years later: Christmas season 1962, a period when small-town machinations of all kinds come to a head. These are presented in Williams’ signature prose style: sinuous sentences that may seem at first a bit hard to follow but in short order reveal themselves to be full of music, humor, and insight. Like the work of writers from James Joyce to Anna Burns, Williams’ novel is one of those books that teach you how to read it, ultimately staking out its own linguistic territory in your brain. As for the idea that “nothing happens here”—nothing except that 12-year-old Jude Quinlan finds an abandoned and possibly dead baby in a courtyard; the assistant priest is scheming furiously to replace his geriatric superior, who keeps wandering off, both physically and mentally; and Dr. Jack Troy, healer, brains, and backbone of Faha, fears he has made a terrible mistake. His oldest daughter, 29-year-old Ronnie, who after her mother’s death and the departure of two younger sisters still keeps house for her father and helps him run his practice, was courted by a young man named Noel Crowe. Troy shut down the relationship, thinking the boy unsuitable, but now gleans that Ronnie has been inquiring about Crowe, apparently crushed to learn he’s emigrated to the U.S. Overcome with remorse, the good doctor cooks up a daring if cockamamie plan. One need not have read the first installment to enjoy the second; reading them in the opposite order is just as good.

Treat yourself to this.