Time of the Child - Niall Williams - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Niall Williams

GENRE: Historical Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: October 24, 2024

RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A companion novel to "This is Happiness" (TIH). Same setting and era, different key characters. Even more slow-paced and meandering than the earlier novel. The writing is just as stunning, but the narration didn't work as well for me this time around. Still, a good option for prose lovers.

Plot Preview:

1962. Faha, four years after the events of "This is Happiness". Doctor Jack Troy is still in Faha, but of his three daughters, only his eldest, Ronnie, still stays with him and helps him with his duties. As Advent begins, a teenaged boy from their neighbourhood turns up at their doorstep with a baby in his arms. With no idea about who abandoned the baby, the Troys have to accept responsibility for the little charge, with Ronnie doing so gladly. But the good doctor knows that there needs to be one immediate change in their life if Ronnie wants to care for the baby. She must get married!

The story comes to us in the third-person perspective of several characters.

This book is not exactly a sequel. While the events of this novel are set four years after the end of TIH, the plot is independent enough to work as a standalone story. There is a little recap provided wherever the reader needs a reference of what happened in the earlier novel. However, for a few characters who make a reappearance in this story, their background is available in detail only in the first book. As such, if you are a stickler for detail, you might like to begin with TIH before venturing into this story.

This time, I was even better prepared for the unstructured narration as I already had first-hand experience of the author’s writing style while reading TIH. But unlike that novel, which was presented in the form of a septuagenarian’s first-person reminiscences about his teen years in Faha, this book is written in a more generic third-person POV, which shifts across multiple characters and even multiple timelines. As such, I found it tougher to forgive the meandering narration this time around. With no firm narrator, there was no justification as to why the story had to take such a serpentine and disjointed journey to the finish line.

Another issue is that, while the book regularly informs us that “a child was found” on a particular night, the actual appearance of the child in the main plot happens only after the one-third mark. So the hundred-or-so pages of build-up can get a bit tedious, all the more as the book keeps reciting disparate incidents from “the day it happened”, but the day seems never-ending!

Those are my only two complaints, but both are relatively major ones.

I liked the three main characters of this book: Dr. Troy, Ronnie, and their teen neighbour Jack. Each of them carries some or the other pain from their pasts, which doesn’t allow them to immerse fully in the happiness of the present. Ronnie was especially amazing, and I love that a male author could create such a compelling and relatable female character and even provide her arc the perfect ending.

Just as in TIH, the characters of this book feel utterly real, like people we might even know in actual life. That grounded approach helps us stay invested in the “plot” even when there’s so little of it. For a character-driven book, such compelling characters are a must. Yet again, Faha the place is as good as a character, with its belief system being the instigator of several events.

The plot is just as wafer-thin as in TIH, but as I said, I was better prepared for it this time around. While the arrival of electricity was the driving force in the first book, the appearance of the child is the key catalyst in this one. The idea of someone stepping in to take care of an abandoned child might lead you to certain assumptions about how the plot will go. But most of these guesses would be inapplicable to this story. I was pleasantly surprised by how the author chose to drive that particular arc ahead.

The writing is just as pleasing and soul-satisfying. The metaphors, the descriptions, the vocabulary, the thought-provoking one-liners – all a literary treat. I think the first book fared a little better in this regard because of its narrator being the source of much wisdom, but this book also has plenty to reflect upon.

All in all, this book is a treat for the prose lover, and a test of the patience for the plot lover. If you are all about the journey and don’t care where you are going as long as you are moving, this novel ought to be a delight.

Recommended but not to all. This book is for literary fiction lovers who like character-driven, prose-rich, plot-less storytelling. If possible, try to read ‘This is Happiness’ prior to this book, though they are both standalones.

3.5 stars, rounding up wherever applicable because the writing and Ronnie deserve it.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for providing the DRC of “Time of the Child” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.