Very little happens for the first quarter of the book. That little is enough to create a tender space that will amplify the aching and tragic voice of all that is to follow. We meet Tom Kettle,a retired detective sergeant. For nine months,he has been living alone in a few rented rooms by the sea at Dalkey,listening to the wind and the birds while he smokes cigarillos. “To him this was the whole point of retirement,of existence – to be stationary,happy and useless.”
Tom seems to be affected by the early stages of dementia,and this makes him a compelling narrator. He can’t quite recall if his mother is dead. He hopes that she is. He knows that he isn’t waiting to get married,but his mind slips on its own ice and suddenly he is in the arms of the beautiful girl,June,who became his wife many years ago. Where is she now?
He can’t find his toothbrush and substitutes his finger to clean his teeth. He is disoriented even by the familiar. “A date in Ireland is a bothering thing,” he muses,his confusion leading to a deeper lucidity. Often enough,his thoughts,unencumbered by memory,land in profound places:“No one minds life as long as they are not trying to leave it. Nor death,as long as they are not dying.”
But Tom does have memories,and the reader is asked to walk a fine line between trust and distrust. Over time,it will become impossible to doubt him. He is not the unreliable narrator so often used in fiction. He is an utterly reliable non-narrator. He gets his own story out of himself like blood out of a stone. It is painful. The pain compounds across generations.
Barry skilfully used this kind of narrative tentativeness inThe Secret Scripture (2008) in which Roseanne McNulty has been institutionalised for 50 years. She has compiled a secret memoir whose truthfulness is questioned by the novel.
The McNultys,a familiar family in much of Barry’s work,have a cameo in Old God’s Time. He has followed this clan across the world and over many decades. The importance of a Miss McNulty inOld God’s Time is the reassurance provided by the connection;that Barry knows this world,this community,is deeply invested in it and has heard its sorrows.