Time of the Child: A Novel

by Niall Williams

‘Don’t people put God in His place by calling this “ordinary life”?’

liquid light had been poured into a darker substance and you could not say if night or day would emerge.

Like all failures of love, it was a question without answer, but, once Jude had thought of it, he could think of nothing else, trapped in the prison of all who have flawed fathers, unable to mend them, yet knowing they are the only ones they will have.

How to continue living? Only through the birth of a child, he thought, is the lure of death conquered. It was a statement worthy of his father. And he recalled then the fantastical notion of the old man, who, in his last year, claimed that the purpose of ageing was to grow into your soul, the one you have been carrying all along.