Time of the Child
Contributor(s): Williams, Niall (Author)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing     (View Publisher's Titles)
ISBN: 1639734201
Physical Info: 1.0" H x 9.27" L x 6.42" W (1.25 lbs) 304 pages
 
In December 1962, 12-year-old Jude Quinlan and his father take their cows to the Christmas fair in Faha, a small town where 'all commentators agreed: nothing happened here.' The town's reputation begins to change after Jude, waiting for his father to emerge from the pub, finds a baby at the back wall of the church. Jude brings the baby to the local physician, Jack Troy, whose grown daughter Ronnie names her Noelle. The Troys hide the baby to prevent her from being taken away and placed in an orphanage. Jack, regretting that he disapproved of Ronnie's former suitor, Noel Crowe, who now lives in America, concocts a far-fetched plan to lure Noel back to Ireland, so he and Ronnie can get married and take the child to the U.S. to raise"--
Niall Williams was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels, including History of the Rain, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and Four Letters of Love, which will soon be a major motion picture starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter, and Gabriel Byrne. His most recent novel, This Is Happiness was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Book of the Year and longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize. He lives in Kiltumper in County Clare, Ireland.
"I am utterly obsessed with Niall Williams." --Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of TOM LAKE
"A study in human community that made me laugh out loud and remember how to love even the people who cause others so much suffering, and especially those who come together to ease it." -- Margaret Renkl, The New York Times
"The writing in this book is lyrical . . . each sentence is to be savored . . . a beautiful book that you will love." -- Good Morning America
"In this poignant novel, miracles abound . . . An engrossing read, the dark and the rain and the shabby but hopeful holiday decorations blending with the peat smoke and the love, all coming fully alive on the page. And that is something of a miracle itself." -- Laurie Hertzel, Boston Globe
"Dazzles . . . A stylistic cousin to the vernacular achievements of Kevin Barry and Roddy Doyle, but also distinctive: Williams draws on idiosyncrasies of speech but with an eye on literary gloss . . . Williams packs his paragraphs with lush imagery and piercing psychological insight. Line by line, it may be the most beautifully written novel I've read this year. Let's raise a glass of mulled wine to an Emerald Isle master at the peak of his powers." -- Hamilton Cain, The Washington Post
"Revelatory . . . Perhaps the most heartwarming thing of all is how the reader is welcomed into Faha's world. When I cried, it was because, with his careful and compassionate depictions of people, place and time, Williams reminds us of the humanity in all, of the vitality of a community that comes together, and of the power in revealing our vulnerabilities to others." -- Jen Doll, The New York Times Book Review
"Williams' story is unveiled in exquisite, sonorous prose that is uniquely, musically Irish. But his sentences aren't merely beautiful for their own sake: They are beautiful precisely because they are attentive to the specific power of language to elicit, to move, and to invite a reader into the transcendence that a great story can provide." -- WORLD Magazine, Fiction Book of the Year
"Another master class in stunningly poetic depictions of the sorrow and beauty of arduous lives." -- People
"A lyrical writer . . . Moist eyes are all but assured." -- Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor
"Gorgeous, wry and humane . . . Time of the Child may have the best sentences of any novel this year . . . An essentially realistic book that lovingly observes the minutiae of its characters' day-to-day lives but there's an element of quiet magic afoot, too." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Moving . . . Follows a widower and his 29-year-old daughter as they go through the motions of daily life while concealing core truths about themselves-until a foundling child upends their comfortable routine." -- The New York Times Book Review, "7 New Books We Recommend This Week"
"I've just emerged from a Niall Williams binge with a belated appreciation for his writing . . . [ Time of the Child] feels, at once, realistic in its rough and comic everyday unfolding and mythic in its riffs on the grand themes of despair and spiritual redemption . . . [it] gives readers that singular experience of nearness to the marvelous." -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR.org
"In some ways, Mr. Williams is like a village doctor himself, kindly but firmly administering a healthy dose of sentiment as Jack might a tonic or salve. The holiday season can be hard, so read this, he seems to say. You will have your little cry, and it will do you good." -- The Wall Street Journal
"On the surface, Time of the Child by Niall Williams is an elegiac portrait of life in an Irish village in the Christmas season of 1962. But it is so much more than that. Somehow, by laying bare the inner lives of these decent country people, my own life feels so much richer for having read it. I was deeply moved by this novel." -- Mary Beth Keane, New York Times Bestselling Author of ASK AGAIN, YES and THE HALF MOON
"A powerful pleasure to find myself back in Faha where the prose is luminous, the people irresistible, the stories mesmerizing, and it never stops raining." -- Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and Booth
"Oh, the utter goosebumpy pleasure of reading this book! The experience will fill you up, even if you didn't know there was an emptiness there to begin with. Niall Williams reminds us again and again that the small and the ordinary are married to amazement, that dailiness and miracles walk hand in hand, and that other people are a mystery: Approach with curiosity! Approach with grace." -- Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS and SANDWICH
"With writing so stunning, Time of The Child forces the reader to turn down page after page to always remember what genius is. Another glorious and touching novel from Niall Williams, one of the world's greatest storytellers." -- Anne Griffin, internationally bestselling author of WHEN ALL IS SAID
"There is so much to admire in Niall Williams new novel-the lyrical language, how landscape and destiny intertwine, the complex bonds of community-but what impresses most is how vividly he enters the innermost thoughts of his characters, thus revealing their seemingly quiet existences brim with the profoundest questionings of how we should live our lives. Time of the Child is a triumph." -- Ron Rash, author of SERENA and THE CARETAKER