BOOK TALK: Author Niall Williams in Mayo later this month for Westport reading

Niall Williams’ new book, ‘Time of the Child’, is being published by Bloomsbury on October 24, and the celebrated author will read from it in Westport that evening. The event – which is being hosted by our bookshop, Tertulia, in collaboration with Westport’s arts festival, Westival – will be held at the beautiful Grove House on Mill Street.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Niall Williams’ previous book, ‘This is Happiness’, is our top-selling Irish fiction at Tertulia. As a bookshop owner and a lifetime reader of fiction (give or take a few years when I hadn’t learnt to read yet!), I am always on a quest for what I call a perfect book; one that is beautifully written, with a the story that amazes me with its simplicity, that moves me in ways I hardly notice yet leaves me changed as a result of reading. That is ‘This is Happiness’!.
So it was with an excitement, and a little trepidation, that I ventured into his, ‘The Time of The Child’. The author brings us back to the town of Faha in County Clare. In ‘This is Happiness’, this is where17-year-old Noel Crowe had come to stay with his grandparents Doady (Aine) and Ganga (Mossie) at a time when the village is in the process of electrification. One of the lovely stories was how Noel fell in love with the local doctor’s daughter – and then his other daughter, and then the third daughter. In ‘Time of the Child’, the story sets off four years later and centres around Doctor Troy and the eldest daughter, Ronnie.
Page 15 and I am crying with laughter at an opening scene where we get to know the doctor and the outer world he inhabits. Everyone he meets has been a patient at some time or other, and when they bump into him outside of the surgery setting, they all assume he knows and remembers all their ailments. They give him updates with gusto and enthusiasm. He feels the strain of not feeling able to ask ‘What was wrong with you again?’. However, “Tommy O tackled the human situation head first by the barbarous greeting of ‘the bowels, Doctor, the bowels’.”
And then we get to know the doctor’s inner thoughts, his philosophy on life and his respect for the people who rely on him. “Don’t people put God in His place by calling this ‘ordinary life’?”
Ronnie has stayed in Faha working in the practice while her two sisters have left for bigger and better things elsewhere. Doctor Troy is saddened that Ronnie feels the need to stay with him, now that her mother has passed away. He wonders at her first instinct being failure. How had he given her that, he did not know. He wants to tell her that he was sorry for failures of fatherhood ‘too many to count over too many years’. He’s sorry he had discouraged Noel Crowe those years before when he came to bring Ronnie a book. He, as a father, thought Noel was not suitable. The young man subsequently left and went to the States.
There is much for is in the west to identify with in this story. Rain is like a backdrop to life in the village, that beautiful soft rain that seems to run through us all on this island, but particularly in Faha. Williams talks of the ‘porous nature of a people living inside the same rain’. He talks about the ‘lid never staying on a story’ – and any of us privileged enough to live in rural Ireland can attest to the truth of this. He shares with us the beauty of the eccentricities of life in a rural village, so uttery funny at times, but he does so with such respect for the way of life and the kindness and love that exists amongst all its inhabitants.
The doctor himself has some regrets, and he reveals more of himself as we go through the story. Christmas is approaching and the town’s Christmas Fair brings with it its usual madness. The last cattle sale of the year will decide for many families the kind of Christmas they will have. The Quinlans are no exception. Their family has had their share of tragedy, and life is tough for young Jude Quinlan, who is in town on fair day helping his father sell the cattle.
That evening, while waiting for his father to head home from the pub, he ‘finds’ a lifeless baby in the graveyard. He and Tim-Tom (twins Tim and Tom) ride in the back of the tractor with the baby to the doctor. By some miracle, he manages to revive the infant. It is 1960s Ireland, and a past mistake emboldens the Doctor to tell no one about the baby. He and his daughter endeavour to keep the child a secret.
‘Time of the Child’ is a book to savour. Like ‘This is Happiness’, it is perfect. I am so looking forward to meeting Niall Williams and hearing him read from this his latest book. Join us at 7pm on October 24 at Grove House. Visit www.westival.ie to book tickets.

Bríd Conroy and her husband, Neil Paul, run Tertulia bookshop at The Quay, Westport.