Cracked Lens over a Cold Case: Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time

Kevin Foster, an expert in war narratives at Monash University, helps Chris examine a quirky veteran: the hero of Old God's Time fought in the Malayan Emergency and is a retired Garda. He was also brought up in a Christian Brothers home: protagonist Tom Kettle has been through the wars, so to speak. Tom's past resurfaces when two policemen visit his home in Dalkey about a cold case, little realising how closely the mystery relates to Tom's personal tragedies. His attempts to start again seem never to have succeeded; his life has been a series of devastating losses with only glimpses of contentment. Old memories intrude upon Tom's present so forcibly that we wonder whether he has dementia. The book is also haunted, in an inter-textual way, by ghosts from Sebastian Barry's other novels. Kevin and Chris find Old God's Time a moving and complex book which also achieves an unlikely humour in its vision of Tom Kettle's eccentric and perhaps disintegrating mind. The novel moves gracefully between different registers, invoking Greek myth with pathos at one moment and conventions of crime fiction at another. Contains spoilers.

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