Time of the Child: A Novel

by Niall Williams

The challenges were many, not least because of the inveterate layering of all Irish life, where the most important things were never said, and depth was more valued than surface.

That she was in a story familiar to all, that there had been many others before her and would be many after, with child and without, departing in darkness and with no goodbye, was no comfort, for the suffering of each is incomparable and no two stories are the same.

Running away to England was what England was for. If it did not exist, Ireland would have invented it.