Time of the Child
by

Time of the Child

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 33 seconds

Today, I dove into “Time of the Child” by Niall Williams, and I can already tell it will be a journey worth taking. This beautifully crafted novel, penned by the same author who brought us “This Is Happiness,” unfolds during a magical Christmas in the quaint Irish town of Faha. At its heart is a touching story about a father and daughter that beautifully explores the idea that miracles can touch our lives, no matter our beliefs.

As I turned the pages, I thought about how this enchanting tale would evoke love’s profound and transformative power when I light my Hanukkah candles. It promises to be a genuinely uplifting read!

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities toward the sick and his care for the dying have always set him apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow and remains there, having missed one chance at love and declined another marriage proposal from an unsuitable man.

During the Advent season of 1962, as the town prepared for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives were turned upside down when a baby arrived on their doorstep. As winter passes, the lives of the father and daughter, their understanding of family, and their roles in the community are changed forever.

Set throughout one December in the same village as Williams’ beloved “This Is Happiness,” “Time of the Child” offers a tender return to Faha for readers familiar with its charms and serves as a heartwarming welcome for new readers exploring it for the first time.

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The Land in Winter

Read: November 2025

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The Land in Winter: A Novel

by Andrew Miller

“The Land in Winter” by Andrew Miller is a captivating exploration of relationships and a masterclass in storytelling. It reaffirms Miller’s status as one of the most brilliant chroniclers of the human heart. The novel has been shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize and has also won the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the 2025 Winston Graham Historical Prize for Fiction.

December 1962: In a village deep in the English countryside, two neighboring couples begin the day. Local doctor Eric Parry commences his rounds in the town while his pregnant wife, Irene, wanders the rooms of their old house, mulling over the space that has grown between the two of them.

On the farm nearby lives Irene’s mirror image: witty but troubled Rita Simmons is also expecting. She spends her days trying on the idea of being a farmer’s wife, but her head still swims with images of a raucous past that her husband, Bill, prefers to forget.

When Rita and Irene meet across the bare field between their houses, a clock starts. There is still affection in both their homes; neither marriage has yet been abandoned. But when the ordinary cold of December gives way–ushering in violent blizzards of the harshest winter in living memory–so do the secret resentments harbored in all four lives.

An exquisite, page-turning examination of relationships, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling–proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of the most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.

Andrew Miller‘s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won several prestigious awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy.

Following Ingenious Pain, he released several other novels: Casanova, Oxygen (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001), The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure (which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011), The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm’s Song, and The Land in Winter (which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2025).

Andrew Miller’s novels have been translated into twenty languages. He was born in Bristol in 1960 and currently resides in Somerset.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

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The Book of Love: A Novel

Read: March 2024

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The Book of Love: A Novel

by Kelly Link

I started reading “The Book of Love: A Novel” by Kelly Link today. The book showcases her exceptional writing skills, where she channels different forms of love, including friendships, romance, and family ties, with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary prowess. Readers can expect to experience joy, a little terror, and an affirmation that love endures despite challenges.

The story revolves around Laura, Daniel, and Mo, who mysteriously vanished from their hometown in Lovesend, Massachusetts, and were presumed dead. However, almost a year later, they find themselves in a high school classroom with their unremarkable music teacher. The teacher seems to know why they disappeared and what brought them back. They agree to undertake magical tasks to reclaim their lives, allowing them to return to their families and friends, but they can’t reveal where they’ve been. The tasks would lead to winners and losers.

Their resurrection attracts the attention of other supernatural beings with their agendas, which puts the community in danger and chaos. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo try to piece their lives together, and Laura’s sister Susannah tries to make sense of what she remembers, they must solve the mystery of their deaths to prevent a looming disaster.

The story takes place in Lovesend, where readers will experience love and loss, laughter and dread, magic, karaoke, and some delicious pizza.

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Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

Read: February 2024

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Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

by Isabel Waidner

Today, I began reading “Corey Fah Does Social Mobility: A Novel” by Isabel Waidner. The book is about Corey Fah, a writer whose novel has just won the Fictionalization of Social Evils prize. Despite this achievement, the trophy and funds with the award still need to be in reach. The novel celebrates radical queer survival and challenges false notions of success.

Corey, their partner Drew, and their pet spider, Bambi Pavok, embark on a quest to find an elusive trophy with neon-beige color and UFO-like qualities. This journey takes them back to their childhood in the forest and includes a stint on a reality TV show. While facing the horrors of wormholes and time loops, Corey discovers the difference between a prize and a gift in a complex way.

Following the Goldsmiths Prize–winning Sterling Karat Gold, Isabel Waidner’s bold and buoyant new novel is about coming into one’s own, the labor of love, the tendency of history to repeat itself, and what ensues when a large amount of cultural capital is suddenly deposited in a place it has never been before.

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Trip: A Novel

Read: September 2025

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Trip: A Novel

by Amie Barrodale

Trip: A Novel by Amie Barrodale follows a woman who embarks on a journey to the afterlife to help her son, who is lost at sea. Her voyage begins on a limbo-drifting ghost ship, blending humor and emotion as she explores the body and mind. Barrodale skillfully combines humor with poignant moments, making the supernatural feel personal. The book moved me, reflecting the emotional tides between mother and son.

Sandra dies suddenly at a death conference in Nepal. Days later in America, her son, Trip, runs away with a man. Sandra tries to send a message to Trip through the mystics, but they are distracted while her son and the man set out to sea.

Amie Barrodale‘s first novel follows the unpredictable journey of Sandra and her son, Trip, as they navigate the realms of restless souls and Buddhist deities. As they move between life and death, Sandra’s unwavering devotion to saving her child and striving to be a good mother anchors the narrative, propelling it forward with emotional depth and urgency. This book will particularly resonate with fans of literary fiction, magical realism, and those intrigued by philosophical explorations of life and death. Readers who appreciate stories rich in emotional complexity and spiritual themes will find themselves eagerly immersed in this enthralling tale.

Wide-eyed with wonder, hilariously funny and painfully moving, Trip: A Novel reveals the deeper meaning of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: the past is a memory, the future is a projection, the present disappears before we can see it.

Amie Barrodale’s stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. In 2012, she was awarded The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction for her story “William Wei.” She is the author of You Are Having a Good Time: Stories.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

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Half His Age

Read: January 2026

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Half His Age: A Novel

by Jennette McCurdy

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy is a strikingly insightful and humorously poignant character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old girl who faces numerous obstacles—or attempts to overcome them—in her quest to be seen, desired, and loved. This novel is a blend of sadness, humor, and thrills, exploring themes of sex, consumerism, class, desire, loneliness, the internet, rage, intimacy, power, and the often misguided lengths we go to obtain what we want. The New York Times has listed it as one of “The Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026.”

Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn’t? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does.

Jennette McCurdy is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” which won the 2023 American Library Association Alex Award. The book has been published in over thirty countries and has sold more than three million copies. McCurdy is also creating, writing, and executive producing an Apple TV+ series loosely inspired by “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” starring Jennifer Aniston. Additionally, “Half His Age” is her debut novel.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books I’ve personally vetted for quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

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The Furrows- A Novel

Read: October 2022

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The Furrows: A Novel

by Namwali Serpell

The Furrows: A Novel by Namwali Serpell is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity, double consciousness, and the wishful—and sometimes willful—longing for reunion with those we’ve lost. Namwali Serpell’s remarkable new novel captures the uncanny experience of grief, the way the past breaks over the present like waves in the sea. I highly recommend this book.

The Furrows: A Novel reminded me of my longing to be reunited with Jan. I know it is impossible, but that does not keep me from desiring the unattainable. Reading this novel helped me remind me that Jan is still with me in spirit and that is far better than reuniting with her.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Cassandra Williams is twelve, and her little brother Wayne is seven. One day, an accident happens when they’re alone together, and Wayne is lost forever. Or so it seems. Though his body is never recovered, their mother, unable to give up hope, launches an organization dedicated to missing children. Their father leaves and starts another family somewhere else.

As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in coffee shops, airplane aisles, subway cars, and cities on either coast. Here is her brother’s more aging face, the light in his eyes, his lanky limbs, the way he seems to recognize her too. But it can’t be, of course. Or can it? Disaster strikes again, and C meets a man, both mysterious and strangely familiar, who is also searching for someone and his place in the world. His name is Wayne.

Namwali Serpell’s remarkable novel captures the ongoing and uncanny experience of grief–the past breaking over the present like waves in the sea. The Furrows is a bold and beautiful exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a masterful story of black identity, double consciousness, and the wishful and sometimes willful longing for reunion with those we’ve lost.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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