Old God's Time

TWICE WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Barry writes bout unconditional love better than anyone I have ever read. Ever.' MELISSA HARRISON
'Amazing. . . For page after page, I found myself thinking, how does he do that?' DAVID NICHOLLS
'His work reminds us how much we need these rare gifts of the natural storyteller.' TESSA HADLEY
'Nobody writes like, nobody takes risks like, nobody pushes the language, and the heart, and the two together, quite like Sebastian Barry does.' ALI SMITH
'Full of love and heartache, this is an unforgettable novel from one of our finest writers.' DOUGLAS STUART

'Have you ever been the custodian of a story no one else believed?'
'Oh yes,' he said.
'You have?'
'Yes,' he said.
'Then I can tell you.'

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children.

But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God's Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.