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Time Present And Time Past (2013)

by Deirdre Madden(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0571290884 (ISBN13: 9780571290888)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Faber and Faber

review 1: I totally enjoyed this novel, a quiet gem that is a snapshot of an Irish family that gives you an appreciation of family ties and how choosing to be accepting or judging impacts a family and how just one naturally kind and loving person can change a family's character. This book had two such characters, Christy and Collette, both married into the family, and the family is far richer for it. The book is centered on Fintain, the husband, father, brother, son, and nephew of the other characters and his relationship with each of the others. This reminds us how life's little interactions and little pleasures are the core of our existence, and to cherish and accept those we love.
review 2: Irish novelist Deirdre Madden's ninth novel, Time Present, and Time Past, take... mores its title from the “Burnt Norton” section of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past.” It tells the story of Fintan Buckley, a Dublin legal adviser (described as "a strong contender for the title of Most Unimaginative Man in Ireland"), who at age 47 is facing an existential crisis in his domestic and family life. On the surface, Fintan appears to have very happy life, that is until he begins experiencing "strange shifts of perception" affecting time and memory, which ultimately lead to some rather dark revelations involving Fintan, his sister (Martina), and their emotionally distant mother (Joan). Along the way, one is reminded of of Faulkner's observation in Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” Madden's luminous novel is many things: subtle, intriguing, somewhat melancholy, and thoughtful. After all, what more could one hope for in a novel? less

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