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'Time of the Child' is a marvelous blend of despair and redemption

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'Time of the Child' is a marvelous blend of despair and redemption

A village “on the western edge of a wet nowhere” populated by men who drink too much and women who smile too little. Throw in cows, an addled priest, an abandoned baby and a thick cloud cover of shame and you have the elements for a quintessential Irish story.

So quintessential, in fact, I’ve held off reading Niall Williams for a long time, despite hearing raves about his work. My skepticism, it turns out, was misplaced. I’ve just emerged from a Niall Williams binge with a belated appreciation for his writing, which invests specificity and life in characters and places easily reduced to clichés.

Time of the Child is Williams’ latest novel, a companion piece, rather than a sequel to, his 2019 novel, This Is Happiness. Both books are set in the rural village of Faha — a town in the far west of Ireland whose inhabitants, we’re told, possess “the translucent flesh that came from living in an absolute humidity.”

Time of the Child takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1962 and opens — and closes — on a set piece of Mass at the parish church, where most of the village gathers. In between lies a story that feels, at once, realistic in its rough and comic everyday unfolding and mythic in its riffs on the grand themes of despair and spiritual redemption.

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Jack Troy is the town doctor and central character here. He’s a melancholy contained man who, we’re told, “carrie[s] himself in a manner that [the townspeople of] Faha might have summarized as Not like us.” Dr. Troy lost his wife and then the older woman he unexpectedly fell in love with, who’s now also dead. Keeping house for him is his 29-year-old daughter, Ronnie, the eldest of three sisters; the one who remained at home.

Ronnie, too, is a semi-enigma to the townspeople: Our narrator tells us that “Added to [her] reserve was not only the screened lives of all women in the parish at the time, but the marginal natures of all writers, for Ronnie Troy’s closest companion was her notebook.”

Dr. Troy has become haunted by despair and by a particularly heartrending question: “Why does no one love my daughter?” The answer, he fears, is his own glowering presence that may have repelled one especially promising suitor.

Inspired by what we’re told is a “mixed fuel of … brandy … [and] a parent’s fear of the unmade world after them,” Dr. Troy, uncharacteristically, resolves on a bizarre scheme to make things right. As the saying goes: “Man plans, God laughs.”

Instead of unfolding the Troy family narrative chronologically, Williams layers it on top of other simultaneous storylines, all of which are graced with language as bracing as salt spray from the chill Atlantic. We follow, for instance, the wanderings of Jude Quinlan, a 12 year old “on the rope-bridge between man and boy.”

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Jude’s father drinks and gambles and his mother, Mamie, possesses “the anxious look of one married to an instability.” Listen to how Williams moves fluidly from the mundane to the wider lens of the numinous in these snippets from an extended passage where Jude helps to unload a van full of Christmas toys for the town fair:

There were toy soldiers, kits for flying gliders, … skittles in a net, balls, bats. … dolls of one expression but many dresses, …

For Jude, carrying everything from the van … was as close has he would get to handling any of these things. He had no resentment or bitterness . Rather, from nearness to the marvelous something rubbed off on him …

The other thing, the one that only occurred to him years later when he would recall what happened that day, was that what he was carrying out of the van that December morning was his childhood.

For those who believe in such phenomena, Jude will be the instrument for bringing a miracle — a Christmas miracle complete with a baby and a virginal mother, no less — into this story. The other miracle here is a literary one: Time of the Child itself, which gives readers that singular experience of nearness to the marvelous.

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Lifestyle

Where tradwives and leftists agree : Code Switch

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Where tradwives and leftists agree : Code Switch
Illustration in four panels of woman working, woman cooking, woman cleaning and woman serving husband

The rise of momfluencers and tradwives are filling a void for modern mothers. In this episode, we continue our conversation about the hellscape of modern motherhood, and look into an alternative to the tradwife lifestyle.

We want to hear from our listeners about what you like about Code Switch and how we could do better. Please tell us what you think by taking our short survey, and thank you!

This episode was produced by Jess Kung. It was edited by Courtney Stein. Our engineer was Josephine Nyounai.

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Tell us: What smells remind you of L.A.?

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Tell us: What smells remind you of L.A.?

There’s no single smell that defines Los Angeles. Certain scents are often linked to the bustling streets of downtown or the verdant banks of the L.A. River, while others are tied to the more secluded, quiet corners of places like Mount Washington or Bel-Air. The city’s essence shifts subtly as you move through it, with each location offering a different sensory experience that reflects the multitudes of Los Angeles.

Our sense of smell is often overlooked, but it’s the one thing that can bring back memories of a place faster than anything else. There’s the rich, loamy aroma of the Sequoia forests, which feels like nature itself is breathing. Or, if you’ve ever been to Ojai, you’ll know the sweet, citrusy scent of Pixie tangerines that lingers in the air. And think about driving up the 5 — you’ll get a whiff of manure whether you like it or not.

Los Angeles has its own distinct smells too, from taco stands to beach trips to Jacaranda trees in the late spring. We’d love to hear from you about your favorite (or least favorite) smells that remind you of L.A. Please fill out the form below and we may reach out to you for a future story.

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Nick Frost wants you to laugh and squirm in “Get Away”

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Nick Frost wants you to laugh and squirm in “Get Away”

Maisie Ayres, Sebastian Croft, Aisling Bea, and Nick Frost in Steffen Haars’ Get Away

Danielle Freiberg/IFC Films and Shudder


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Danielle Freiberg/IFC Films and Shudder

In the new horror-comedy Get Away, the Smiths seem like your average British family, if maybe a bit… morbid? We meet them as they’re driving to a ferry where they’ll embark on a holiday to the fictional Swedish island of Svalta, but not everyone is happy to see them.

“In fact, they’re not welcome at all,” Nick Frost, the film’s writer, tells NPR.

He also plays the patriarch, Mr. Smith. “They shouldn’t be there. It should only be for the Swedes and they just don’t listen,” he says.

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See, as polite as they may seem at the outset, the Smiths just don’t care whether they’re welcome or not. They’re here, and the locals are just going to have to deal with it.

“This is Europe, yeah?” Actor Maisie Ayres, who plays Jessie Smith, tells an ornery restaurant owner at the start of the film.

As Frost tells it, it’s pretty typical for British tourists – or American ones, for that matter – to act so entitled. “There is a community of Swedish nutcases who do not like foreigners. You are not on the island and the Smith family ignore every bit of advice to not go, and straight away they essentially walk right into a very angry group of natives,” Frost said.

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On combining horror and comedy

I love horror and I love comedy and I don’t see why we can’t be all of those things at the same time, you know? But I think traditionally in films we’ve done, the horror has to be frightening and horrific and the comedy should be funny. It should stand up as a comedy. And then, by the way, here at the end there’s a kind of slash-fest.

Folk horror and its influence on Get Away

This comes from me spending 20 years on and off going to this tiny Swedish island. My ex-wife’s family, they’re Swedish, and they have a beautiful house on this tiny island. There’s only 40 houses, there’s no roads, there’s no cars … and I was always amazed at how much culture they had, you know, the Scandinavians in particular. Coming from Britain, and London: yeah, we do have culture, but it’s not like they have there. Ours has been dumbed down slightly. I just love the fact that my children got to grow up around a society that had that kind of culture.

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They celebrate things. They dress up as dogs some days. They stay up all night drinking vodka on other [days]. You know what I mean? Every community has its little cultural quirks and I just found that fascinating. [But] even in 20 years I never really felt like they accepted me. Being British, there’s this kind of desperation to be accepted, [like] ‘please like me.’

Entitlement of British tourists 

I think that generally is the dynamic of English people. We’re still surprised when people don’t speak English. We’re flabbergasted that no one would take into consideration our needs. We are that really. I think historically on [Svalta] we suggest that four British sailors were killed 250 years ago and then our British family invade the island 250 years later.

What a horror comedy can teach an audience

There’s a Belgian Dutch film called The Vanishing and then there’s also a [Belgian] mockumentary called Man Bites Dog where a film crew follows a serial killer around to get a glimpse into his life. Both of those films – the central antagonist is a serial killer. They are homicidal maniacs. They’re not nice people. They’re awful people. But what those filmmakers did really well was, you know, they’re rubbish at their jobs … you know you get to a point where you empathize with them because they appear human and I really like that.

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I got a chance with this to kind of do the same thing where you shouldn’t like the Smith family in the end – I don’t want to give spoilers away – but you shouldn’t “kind of” like the Smith family. But as an audience member, if you can walk out of the cinema, of the theater, and say ‘they were kind of nice, they were cute and funny,’ it leaves people a bit torn when they come out, which is great.

On the 20th anniversary of Shaun of the Dead

It feels great. I think I tried to keep a vibe of that in Get Away, too, in terms of I haven’t made it to make a specific type of audience laugh. I’ve made it to make [actor and co-writer] Simon Pegg laugh and I’ve made it to make [co-writer and director] Edgar Wright laugh. So that’s my audience: Simon and Edgar and I think I took that away from Shaun of the Dead. I’ve been working now as an actor fairly successfully for 20 years now, and I think I’m very thankful for that kind of longevity.

Worst tourists: American or British?I don’t want to upset anyone here, but I think Americans in America, they just fit. It works. But if you take Americans anywhere else, it just doesn’t really work. It’s not a good … culturally it’s not a good fit. But British people in Britain are sometimes really annoying.

Get Away is in select theaters now.

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