← The Book Case
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- [00:07]
Kate
It is Thursday. It is the bookcase. I'm really excited about today's episode, so I'll go ahead and just quickly introduce myself. I'm Kate and he's the other guy. Who's the other guy?
- [00:17]
Charlie Gibson
Charlie Gibson. I'm Charlie with the bookcase. With Kate and Charlie publishing every Thursday, you don't have to listen to us on a Thursday. You can listen to us on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever day you choose. Kate likes to think everybody listens on Thursday. Not so.
- [00:31]
Kate
I do.
- [00:32]
Charlie Gibson
That's okay. We'll forgive her that trespass.
- [00:35]
Kate
That's probably just mom who listens on Thursday, but, you know, God love Mom.
- [00:39]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah.
- [00:39]
Kate
I am so excited about today's show. It is our third bookcase with the great Niall Williams. The last time we had him on, we had so much fun. I was exchanging emails with his publicist, Rosie, and I was like, oh, we just love having Niall on the show. And she was like, well, it's funny that Niall's going to be in Minneapolis, St. Patrick's Day. And I think I actually whooped. I think I actually whooped aloud in. In my bedroom. And I called you right away and said, oh, my gosh, we have to get Good Morning America on board. We have to talk to him. And we had so much fun catching up with him that we decided to take the Good Morning America conversation that I'm sure you watched right around St. Patrick's Day of 2025 and expanded into a whole episode of the bookcase because we just can't get enough Niall Williams.
- [01:25]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah. First of all, Kate doesn't whoop very often, so that's singular and should be noted. Secondly, we did find it a happy coincidence that Niall was going to be on book tour for his new book, Time of the Child, and he was traveling with his wife, Christine Breen, who is also an author, gardener, excellence, and also does some painting. But she and Niall have written some books together. But anyway, we wanted to sit down and talk with them on St. Patrick's Day. Did that for Good Morning America. Good Morning America only. Here is a couple of minutes and we wanted to take the full interview and turn it into a podcast, which you're about to hear. This was recorded at the local, which is an Irish pub in Minneapolis, and we had a nice time talking to them. As much as I admire him, it was our first chance to meet him and meet Christine and thoroughly enjoyed it. The Irish do have a way of storytelling, and Niall epitomizes that to a table.
- [02:18]
Kate
He does. He's a Literary crush for me. You know, there are people whose writing is so good that I just. I want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with them and find out if they are really as smart and as articulate and interesting in person as they are on the page. And Niall Williams does not disappoint. And Christine, I mean, it was just like I wanted to pull up a stool in their living room and just cop a squat and just live there for a couple of years. Because sometimes I think if Niall Williams didn't have the page, I. He'd be just as good a storyteller, don't you think?
- [02:50]
Charlie Gibson
Yes, I do. To answer your question. You think. Yes, I do. I think I agree with you, what you said. I think occasionally, although you don't give me much credit for that. So what you're going to hear now, in just a few moments is the full interview that we did for Good Morning America, which they edited down and aired, I think, a few weeks ago. But Niall has such an interesting story. He and Christine were living in New York, as you'll hear, and simply decided to pull up stakes, go back to Ireland. Niall being an Irishman by birth, and tried to decide if they could write. And, boy, can they. So I think it's a really fascinating story. Where do you find the best place to write? Where can you find inspiration? And does inspiration depend on place? That's really an interesting question.
- [03:40]
Kate
Well, it's an interesting parallel with Colin McCann, who we spoke to a couple of weeks ago, who talked about the fact that he was from someplace rural, and he. He didn't think he could write until he got out of his rural area and really live and travel across the United States and teach classes, and I think he even rode the rails. I mean, I think he was even a little bit of a hobo for a while. Like, he felt he needed to sort of go and suck the marrow out of life in order to become a writer. Whereas Niall felt like he had to go slow life down and say, you know, goodbye to the hustle and bustle in order to find out if he could really write. It's true what Harlan Coben said. You ask five writers how they do it, they'll give you 20 different answers. In some ways, I hope it's encouraging for all those writers out there. Go out, travel, find someplace rural. You can have success either way.
- [04:28]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, yeah. Colin McCann, who wrote Twist, which we talked to him a few weeks ago, wonderful book. And you're right, he's Irish. He went to New York to write Niall is Irish and he went from New York to back to rural Ireland to figure out if he could write. As we've said over and over again, there is no cookie cutter way to becoming a successful writer, and everybody has a different path. But the idea of going, as Niall did, from a city of 8 and a half million people, new York City, to Killtumper, Ireland, as He says, what, eight to 10 houses in Kiltumper, that kind of a cultural shock is just amazing. So we had a wonderful time with Niall and Christine Breen, his wife, at the local in Minneapolis on St. Patrick's Day. We went early in the day, so we didn't get any green beer, but we did have an interesting conversation, and here it is.
- [05:21]
Kate
So, Christine, 40 years ago, you and Niall are living in New York City and you decide to pull up stakes and move to Ireland. Why?
- [05:30]
Christine Breen
Because it seemed like we weren't getting anywhere artistically. I was working at the American Journal of Medicine doing editing, and Niall was a copywriter writer for Avon Books. And my father. My father's father's house became available and it was vacant for five years. So we said, can we go over there and just try our luck? You know, as if you would go to business school or medical school or law school. We were going to writing and painting school, but we were the teachers and the students. And the students, yeah, that's why we did it.
- [06:06]
Kate
But why did living rurally, you think, speak to being able to go to writing or painting school?
- [06:13]
Christine Breen
Well, the house was. At first, it was free.
- [06:17]
Kate
Big, big, big.
- [06:18]
Christine Breen
No tuition. Neither did we have any money, but we had. What did we have? 10 boxes of books and four suitcases and not a stick of furniture. And it just was an adventure. I'm adventurous.
- [06:31]
Niall Williams
You are.
- [06:32]
Christine Breen
Niall isn't as adventurous, but I'm very adventurous.
- [06:35]
Charlie Gibson
So you're going back to Ireland. Where did you go?
- [06:39]
Christine Breen
County Clare.
- [06:40]
Charlie Gibson
And the town of Kilmahill, population 4,000 families?
- [06:48]
Niall Williams
No, no. So we live in Kiltumper in a townland just north of the village of Kilmahill, and in that townland there's maybe 10 houses. So that's where we were really moving to. And Kiltumper is the place that all the Breens have come from, back as far as anyone can remember. So I think the most significant thing is that when Chris arrived there on the first day, April 1, 1985, Mary Breen, distant relation, came out, took her hand in both of her hands and shook it strongly and said, welcome home, Chrissy. Welcome home. And so even though Chris had Grown up in New York and never been lived in County Clare. She'd visited twice but never lived there. There was that strong sense of Breen coming home, and so they kind of trusted her and took her in. And they were much more skeptical of me because I was a Dubliner.
- [07:38]
Christine Breen
They were very suspicious of me.
- [07:39]
Niall Williams
They were very suspicious of me.
- [07:40]
Christine Breen
Yeah, they were from Dublin.
- [07:42]
Niall Williams
I had to work harder.
- [07:43]
Kate
Yeah, but she's more adventurous than you are. So did she have to talk you into this, or were you an enthusiastic.
- [07:50]
Christine Breen
Participant while he was going home?
- [07:51]
Niall Williams
I was enthusiastic. So I think after five years in Manhattan, I think we both had a profound sense that we weren't living our own lives or living the wrong life in some way. So we were riding the commuter train into Manhattan from Mount Kisco every morning with beautiful people who rose in the dark and gathered on that platform and went into the city. And in the evening, all those same people came home in the dark. They all looked a little smudged by the day. And I felt that if we had closed our eyes, we could wake up five years later on that same train. And so it was about making a choice and moving to a white page, basically.
- [08:31]
Charlie Gibson
So you go from New York City, population eight and a half million, to Killtumper, which has how many houses?
- [08:40]
Niall Williams
About eight houses.
- [08:40]
Charlie Gibson
About eight houses. That's a heck of a culture shock.
- [08:45]
Christine Breen
Yeah, it was. It certainly was, because we had no telephone. We had one bulb of electricity in each of the four rooms. That was it. Right.
- [08:55]
Niall Williams
The water had just been put in first. The silence, the immense dark at night, the sense that you had to really make your own life. You know, you had to do things to make your own life. And so by that, I mean that in the evenings, we would take hand torches and walk down the road to our neighbors, and we'd come in the back door, and no invitation was required. And you just come in and spend the evening telling how you were getting on and chatting, and you were the entertainment for people, because we were. We had. There was 58 acres around the house, so we suddenly had. We bought four cows. I never even had a goldfish. So that was the challenge. But the neighbors were extraordinarily helpful and welcoming to us. And they were mostly older people who really wanted a Breen to continue to live in the Breen house. And so they were, you know, enormously welcoming to us. But you are making your life in that way also. The same thing of sitting down to a white page. Same thing.
- [09:58]
Charlie Gibson
So you're painting?
- [10:00]
Christine Breen
Yes, I started to paint.
- [10:02]
Charlie Gibson
He's writing?
- [10:03]
Christine Breen
Yes, at first we're both writing.
- [10:05]
Niall Williams
Both writing.
- [10:06]
Charlie Gibson
Well, you started with a book, just as you've told me. You just wrote what was in front of you for a year. What was the litmus to tell you whether or not this was a successful move, whether you had done the right thing?
- [10:23]
Niall Williams
We never really came to that conclusion. No. I mean, we're there 40 years now and you still are kind of. Is that the right thing? But I think that first year we really didn't know.
- [10:35]
Christine Breen
No. And we had no heat. We had seven blankets on top of us.
- [10:39]
Niall Williams
Ed McCaskey, the owner of the Chicago Bears, when he read oh come you back the first book about moving there, he sent in the post two giant Chicago Bears coach's coats, which were sort of eider down coats in blue with a big orange C on them that went to your ankles and with a hood. He felt we must be so cold.
- [11:00]
Kate
But so many people in the neighborhood already had them. So you didn't want to get. You just blended, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [11:07]
Charlie Gibson
Lots of Bears fans in kid's humper.
- [11:09]
Kate
But did you find you took right to it? I mean, or did it take some time to get adjusted to the quiet before you're like, now I really have to write? Or did you dive right in? Did you say, this is exactly what I've been waiting for?
- [11:20]
Charlie Gibson
No.
- [11:20]
Niall Williams
Nothing could have prepared us.
- [11:21]
Christine Breen
No, it still was an adventure. Learning how to plant potatoes and bees and digging up the earth. And it was the wettest summer in a long time. And it was such an adventure. I don't know, it just.
- [11:38]
Niall Williams
It was. We were young.
- [11:39]
Kate
We were young.
- [11:40]
Niall Williams
You think you'd be able to conquer it? So we endured partly from the support of our neighbors and the community there. And then we began writing that first book. And in some way we understood that you get an energy from taking a leap of faith, you know, it gives you something and the freedom of it, the independence of it. And we were living in a place of extraordinary beauty.
- [12:05]
Charlie Gibson
I get that you wanted the quiet, and I get that it was a change of scene that encouraged you to paint and to write and to continue to write. But what was it about Ireland that made it successful? Did it have to be in Ireland? There's a lot of writers in New York, you know.
- [12:23]
Christine Breen
So for me, not living for free.
- [12:25]
Kate
I was gonna say it doesn't come with free housing.
- [12:27]
Niall Williams
For me, it probably had to be in Ireland, although I didn't know that at the time. So the west of Ireland is its own entity and it's different to Dublin, where I had grown up, and I had grown up reading the literature of the west of Ireland. Yeats moving to the west of Ireland, Synge moving to the west of Ireland. And so I think the west being in the west of Ireland was a freeing space for me, for certain, and I was very aware of literary tradition in Ireland and so on. But also more than that was my first encounter with oral storytelling and people spending the evening in kitchens telling stories about neighbors or about things that had happened in the past. And that understanding somewhat that the idea in Irish storytelling is to pass the time, pass the evening. That's the goal. It's not to get to the point, it's to actually just pass the time so that we have the evening together inside the story. And I think that has influenced me more than anything else about Ireland and my own writing.
- [13:29]
Charlie Gibson
But you grew up there. Did you know that or did you sense that when you went back?
- [13:34]
Niall Williams
I may have sensed it, but I didn't know it. I didn't know it. Dublin is a completely other world from the west of Ireland, and I only visited the west of Ireland on summer holidays and so on. But I had gone to the west of Ireland in my mind, through literature. And so now we were there in a physical, sensual reality. And that was different.
- [13:57]
Kate
Is it the storytelling? Is it that oral exchange of stories that you think brings so much exceptional literature out of Ireland?
- [14:07]
Niall Williams
I think there's several factors. I think that's one, I think the education system in Ireland that I experienced was excellent. It was essay based, so it is about being able to express yourself in writing. I think from the age of 12 you begin to read poetry. And I was reading Charles Dickens in class, Great Expectations, the full novel when I was 14, merchant of Venice. So we were given wonderful texts. So I think the education system was excellent. And I think also there's a thing in Ireland which is there's an honoring of the literary tradition. So at that time, so Yeats was on the currency, you know, places we all knew who Yeats was, and Joyce and Beckett and so on, it didn't really matter how they had been received in their lifetime. By the time I was growing up, they were all honoured important names. And I think even if I recall a moment in more recent times when Seamus Heaney died, there was a moment when it was announced that Seamus Heaney had died. And in Croke park, where the football All Ireland and hurling All Ireland Championships, so 80,000 people in a stadium and it was announced and the Entire stadium just applauded, stood and applauded for the national poet. And I don't know how many countries that would happen in where football fans stand to applaud a national poet. But something of that speaks to me of the sort of centrality of the literary tradition.
- [15:37]
Christine Breen
You know, one of the reasons that we, we stayed, after the first year and a half, two years when we found out that together we weren't able to have children, we adopted our first daughter Deirdre, and then our son Joseph about four years later. And that really anchored us. That became for me the most important thing.
- [15:58]
Charlie Gibson
Why did that anchor you?
- [16:00]
Christine Breen
Because they were from there and they were Irish and this was going to be our family. And yeah, it was safe. The local school was only up the road. There were only six kids in each of their classes and it was lovely place for them to grow up.
- [16:20]
Kate
But when you're going through something as a family, not to bring up something too personal, like for instance, you realize that you have to adopt. Does the whole town know?
- [16:30]
Christine Breen
Yes, they came up because we had no money, right. They came up. One of the women in the village had adopted and she came up, she came up with a couch. She helped us tidy the rooms for when the social workers were coming to interview us.
- [16:42]
Niall Williams
We had to be assessed to see what would be suitable.
- [16:44]
Christine Breen
We're the only parents who have to.
- [16:46]
Niall Williams
Have to pass a test. I remember three, three of the neighbors came up. Three of the women came up with a plastic bath or a baby bath and a doll to show you how to. Because, yeah, they sat. And so in our kitchen, in our main room of the house, the house of the four rooms that time, and there's a ten foot hearth with an open fire on the floor. So the fires on the floor, the grate, the ashes fall below and you can look up and see the sky out through the chimney. And so that's where all the Breens had been born, in that fireplace in a basin, basically. That's where the hot water was back. The people had been living in our house since the early 1800s. So yeah, they made the baby doll right there. We kept that doll for a long time.
- [17:37]
Charlie Gibson
That doll may have taught you how to bathe the baby. There's a doll that my children had when they were young called Betsy Wetsy. And that also could teach you that babies, besides just be bathed and we'll.
- [17:50]
Kate
Take a pause here. More of our conversation with Christine and the great Niall Williams when we return. Out here, there's no one way of doing things, no unwritten rules and no shortage of adventure. Because out here, the only requirement is having fun. Bank of America invites kids six to 18 golf with us for a limited time Sign them up for a free one year membership, giving them access to discounted Tetons at thousands of courses. Learn more@bankofamerica.com golf with us what would you like the power to do? Bank of America restrictions apply cbfa.com golf with us for complete details Copyright 2025 bank of America Corporation. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void?
- [18:38]
Charlie Gibson
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- [18:40]
Kate
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- [18:42]
Charlie Gibson
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- [18:50]
Kate
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- [18:51]
Charlie Gibson
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- [18:53]
Kate
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- [18:54]
Charlie Gibson
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- [19:24]
Niall Williams
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- [19:29]
Charlie Gibson
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- [19:31]
Niall Williams
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- [19:39]
Charlie Gibson
So you have written novels now? This is Happiness Time of the Child, about a fictional town called Faja.
- [19:46]
Niall Williams
Yes.
- [19:47]
Charlie Gibson
Tell me about Faja. And is Faja kil temper?
- [19:51]
Niall Williams
So no, the easy answer to that. So I first created Faja in History of the Rain. And in History of the Rain, Ruth Swain is the daughter of a poet who has died her father, and she's in her attic room with all his books, trying to find him by reading his books. And so she describes a little bit the village Faha, the parish. But she never gets to walk in it. She only gets to leave the house by ambulance. So she only sees what you see in the top of an ambulance window, flickering past. So when I had finished that novel, I realized that I should try to walk out into Faja myself. And having lived there nearly 40 years, I felt, okay, I could dare to write a novel set in County Clare, which I hadn't really before that. And so I positioned Faha in History of the Rain on the Shannon Estuary. Not where we live. So about eight miles south of where we live, down on the Shannon Estuary. And the reason that it was put on the estuary was a simple one. In that history of the rain is about the idea of what happens to us after we die and whether Ruth can believe in the story of heaven and because her father has gone somewhere. And so I needed a place that was tidal, and I wanted to come to an accommodation with that idea of where we might go. So therefore, I found that having a place where the rain falls into the river, which goes out to the sea, which goes up to the clouds, which comes back and falls in the river, that was an important part of that. That's why I originally positioned Faja there. So Faja is not where we live. Although in the last summer, I did get a phone call from our wonderful friend Alan Flynn at the Old Grand Hotel in Ennis, who said, I have two Americans here who have just come from Shannon Airport and they want to go to faja. I told them that Faja doesn't exist, but they said, that doesn't matter. They want to go there.
- [21:46]
Kate
Boy, is that American.
- [21:47]
Niall Williams
They went out to a taxi driver and they said, we just want to go to Faja for the afternoon. He looked at them and they said, so just take us somewhere near between where Niall Williams lives and the Shannon Estuary. And when they came back, the hotel, Alan went out to speak to them and said, well, did you find Fahan? They said, oh, yes, we did. And they had spent all afternoon there, and it was wonderful. So it's a place that's not geographically pinpointed. Part of the attraction for me in writing about Fahou was to write about a place that I considered on the surface to be ordinary, commonplace. So I didn't want to make it such a special place that the people there are living in a sort of Brigadoon. But actually, its ordinariness is what's appealing to me, because the older I live, the more I've been struck by the idea of the extraordinariness of actually human beings, all human beings, and what we do every day, carrying ailments or anxieties or concerns and worries and still carrying on and sort of the heroic element of that. And so that's why Faja was built for that.
- [22:56]
Kate
So you're writing a little bit. I know when we spoke on the show, you said that you were committed to taking Faja into modernity. I know you guys have written about gardening. And I also know, too, that you were concerned about wind turbines getting A little prevalent in Western Ireland. So is modernity coming to Western Ireland, or can you maintain that same rural status quo?
- [23:18]
Niall Williams
Well, I think, first of all, the FAHA novels will cover the time, I hope, between the coming of electricity and the coming of the Internet. So we'll take the second half of the 20th century and watch what happens to this parish where a minor character in one novel becomes a more significant character in another. So things are beginning to change all the time, and it would be foolish not to be including change and to try to stop that in our own life. The most notable change that has happened in Kiltumpur in the last since we've been there really has been the coming of the wind turbines into rural places. And that's certainly been a challenge for us, having lived for so long in a sort of completely pastoral landscape. So the arrival of the wind turbine springs is sort of more industrial element to it, stuck onto the landscape, as it were. So it's impossible not to feel some kind of threat of that to the place that you've been living.
- [24:21]
Charlie Gibson
I think there's a lovely innocence, Christine, in Niles books. I don't mean to characterize that in front of the author, but I wonder if Americans don't tend to romanticize rural Ireland.
- [24:36]
Christine Breen
No, because I think that's true about Americans, and I think that's what attracts them to the books in a way. They want some more of that. That that could actually be. You know, that community can exist, and it does exist. We've seen it in our village all the time. I remember taking my sister one day, she came over and a tick had bitten her just before she left. And she went to the chemist. And as I waited for her almost an hour, the people that came in and out of the chemist's shop, I said, this walks straight out of Nile's novel. So that's the kind of place a really rural place can be. But I think also in Dublin, they don't know this place exists as well.
- [25:20]
Niall Williams
Yeah, I think our experience is. I think it's true, obviously, that all places that have the qualities that a place like Ireland has are romanticized, for sure. I think that's. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't think it's an either or, but I think it's. When I was learning Latin in school, I remember I loved the construction from Cicero, Non Solo Sedetiam, which is not only, but also. So not only is it this, but it is also that and my whole understanding of everything as I've grown older is actually that. That it's nothing is simply singular, that actually things are much more complex and nuanced than that. So, yes, there is a romanticized element of Ireland, and yes, there's also hardship and poverty and homelessness and all of those things also. And it's not one or the other. So it's not that Ireland is that. This is a fabrication and it's false. So every day where we live, we experience elements of community. If you go into Fitz's shop at Kilmahill, they'll immediately ask you how you are and how are the children and how is it? And it'll be engaging and they'll want to chat. And so that exists all the time still, right there, exactly the same as it did when we moved there 40 years ago. There's absolutely no difference. But as well as that, non solo sedetiam, also there are other elements. So I think that it would be foolish to say one or the other. I think both are true.
- [26:47]
Charlie Gibson
You went to Kil Temper to find out if you could write.
- [26:51]
Niall Williams
Yeah.
- [26:52]
Charlie Gibson
Could you have written the Faja novels? Could you have written the other books that you have written together if you had stayed in the United States?
- [26:59]
Niall Williams
No.
- [27:00]
Christine Breen
No.
- [27:01]
Niall Williams
No chance.
- [27:01]
Christine Breen
No chance. NA would have written those books?
- [27:04]
Niall Williams
No, I think I could have written books.
- [27:06]
Christine Breen
You would have been.
- [27:07]
Niall Williams
I would have written because I knew I wanted to write. And I feel I've described it in somewhere, like, if you eventually understand you're a chestnut tree and you produce chestnuts, sometimes the chestnuts are good, sometimes they're not so good, but you're still going to produce chestnuts. So I pretty much knew when I published my first short story when I was 18, I wanted to write and would be spending my life giving to this because I somehow believe, I think, that critic James Wood is a book called the Nearest Thing to Life about the art of fiction. And so it's the best way for me to be in the world writing stories. I'm a better person for it, and I learn more about people and life and a way to be from writing. So I think I would always have written, but certainly I would not have imagined or created fahoul, because I wouldn't have been living with people like that, I think.
- [27:55]
Christine Breen
And it's your home. It's your home now.
- [27:57]
Niall Williams
Absolutely. The house and everything.
- [27:58]
Christine Breen
The novels, the stories.
- [28:00]
Niall Williams
Everything but one.
- [28:01]
Christine Breen
Yeah, exactly. It's organic.
- [28:02]
Niall Williams
And the garden book that we. So we wrote in 2019 in Kiltumper, we had some despair about the state of the world and all the News that you were hearing all the time, particularly about the climate and the natural landscape. And so it was overwhelming because you hear it every day and about the bees and everything was just overwhelmingly negative. I was reading Wendell Berry at the time, wonderful American writer. I got from that, this idea of that the only way to counter that the overwhelming world and earth fear and worry was to try to take care of the bit that you had, the bit that you were stewarding and husbanding. And so we began to try to look at just the piece of ground within our hedge line, that garden, and look at it. Think small, not think large, because by thinking large was overwhelmingly and would defeat you, but by thinking small and saying just the bit you can do today in the garden. He has the idea. Wendell Berry is the one who has the idea, I think, of if you could improve your soil by one inch in your lifetime, it would be a lifetime's work that would be noble. And it's quite difficult to do.
- [29:17]
Charlie Gibson
It's a pleasure to meet you. It's a pleasure to read both of you. And I think you can't read your books without thinking, could I do that? I couldn't write, but could I go live that kind of life? I don't know. It's idealized, I think, in many of our minds, but I don't know, we.
- [29:36]
Kate
Are certainly richer for your having moved there.
- [29:38]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, absolutely.
- [29:39]
Kate
Yeah.
- [29:40]
Niall Williams
Thank you so much.
- [29:41]
Kate
Thank you.
- [29:41]
Christine Breen
Thank you.
- [29:46]
Charlie Gibson
I think, you know, when you look at the bestseller list these days, it's the third in a series or the fourth in a series. What he's writing is really not a series, but I think that's a really interesting concept to take Faja, his fictional Irish town, from the advent of electricity in their little town to the Internet. And that's a really going to be an interesting, I think, span of novels that he will write. First two in the books, this is Happiness, which was about the electrification of Baja, and now Time of the Child. And Time will go on as he writes these novels.
- [30:19]
Kate
You know, it reminds me in some ways of, I mean, a very different genre, but it reminds me in some ways of Louise Penny, that they have created a place, Three Pines in Louise Penny's case, Faja, in Niall Williams case. And the setting becomes such a character that it in itself has its own arc. And I love that about Niall. And I can't wait to see what happens to Faha as it grows and it is shaken into the 20th century, 21st century. You get the sense that Niall himself and Christine are getting shaken into the 20th and 21st century. So I'm really looking forward to following Faha. I'm such a huge fan.
- [30:56]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, yeah. He writes beautifully. And as he says, the reason he's in Ireland is because of this rich storytelling tradition. And he has storytelling in his heart, I think, and as a result does it so well. You know, we questioned him, but do Americans tend to over romanticize quiet rural Irish life? And I've spent enough time in Ireland to know it really is very different in the west of Ireland as opposed to Dublin, which is sort of a one off in Ireland anyway. Niall Williams and Christine Green.
- [31:24]
Kate
Yes. The Quiet man is still his favorite movie. The Quiet man is still his favorite movie. With Maureen and Hera. With John Wayne, John Wayne, Marine.
- [31:32]
Charlie Gibson
And Hara. Maureen O'Hara.
- [31:34]
Kate
Maureen O'Hara. Excuse me, was John Wayne. John Wayne was not Irish. John Wayne was not Irish. I mean, come on. I mean, it's a great movie.
- [31:42]
Charlie Gibson
Thornton in the movie has his wonder. Well, he's an American who comes back to Ireland to get his ancestral cottage. Anyway, a great cast in that movie. Barry Fitzgerald, who is wonderful as McAleen. Victor McLoughlin movie was made, I think in 1952. If you haven't seen it, Bookcasers, you gotta go. It's very sexist. I will warn you of that. But it's. It is a wonderful movie. And western Ireland looks so beautiful in.
- [32:08]
Kate
That movie, by the way, was it western Ireland that you thought was so beautiful or was it Maureen O'Hara that you thought was so beautiful? Like what was the original?
- [32:17]
Charlie Gibson
Both, Both. But. But it is the Irish countryside that just absolutely stuns you in this movie. So I have a book pack for you, Kate, this week. This is the first bookstore owned by an African American, by a black man. How far back do you think that would go?
- [32:33]
Kate
Oh, gosh. Given this country's shameful history, it's really hard to know. You know, one of the ways that this country and so many countries have kept oppression alive and fresh is by denying education and books to the masses that we don't want educated. I'm gonna say post Civil War. Post Civil War.
- [32:53]
Charlie Gibson
Okay. Evan Friss, who wrote the Bookshop, which is a wonderful book that we featured many weeks ago, we asked him that question. What was the first bookshop owned by a black man in America? Who was the first black bookseller in the United States?
- [33:11]
Niall Williams
That would be David ruggles, who in 1834 opened the Anti slavery bookstore in lower Manhattan with advertisements running in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist paper. It served as an overt political space for anti slavery activists to gather, learn, and plot. Within a year, an arsonist burned it to the ground.
- [33:34]
Charlie Gibson
Goes back further than you thought, back to 1834.
- [33:37]
Kate
I mean, really, if I could go back and shake Mr. Ruggles hand. Talk about an open act of defiance. A righteous, open act of defiance. For me, it parallels, you know, Alison Hill, when we talked to her a little while ago, who's head of the American Booksellers association, said that there are bookstores opening across this country right now that are specializing in books that are being banned from library shelves. And I think it is that same sort of open act of quiet defiance that is so important. And so I don't know. Mr. Ruggles, I honor your memory. Way to go for an act of quiet defiance and an important act of defiance. Whether or not you knew arsonists were going to burn it down, it was just a question of how long he was able to stay open for. And I think it's amazing that he opened at all. So that's a great fact. I think it's a good question.
- [34:31]
Charlie Gibson
Do you think David Ruggles is listening?
- [34:33]
Kate
I doubt he's listening. It depends on how spiritual you get and whether or not you feel, you know, that there is such a thing as a heavenly podcast. But I'm sure if there is such a thing as a heavenly podcast, it would be the bookcase. So, Mr. Ruckles, we salute you.
- [34:48]
Charlie Gibson
Well, we take our audience wherever we can find them. We're going to remind you.
- [34:54]
Kate
We're going to remind you I'm live.
- [34:57]
Charlie Gibson
Sure, sure. We're going to remind you of the people who make Bookcase possible.
- [35:03]
Kate
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producers are Simone Swink and Laura Mayer, and we want to make mention of Amanda McMaster and Sabrina Kohlberg at Good Morning America and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Make sure to follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate, and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this podcast, we have linked them in the episode description.
- [35:31]
Charlie Gibson
Because we were filming this conversation for Good Morning America, we didn't think we were going to necessarily use it for the podcast, but we were so fascinated by it, we decided we would. So we hadn't asked Nile for a coda. So let me just give you a couple of sentences from the second paragraph of his book Time of the Child, to those who lived there FAJA was perhaps the last place on Earth to expect a miracle. It had neither the history nor the geography for it. The history was remarkable for the one fact upon which all commentators agreed nothing happened here. But it is the genius of Nile that something does happen in time of the Child in faja, and it's a wonderful read. T Mobile's network is more expansive than your favorite fictional universe because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network switch. Now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more at t mobile.com keepandswitch. Up to four lines via virtual prepaid card left 15 days qualifying unlocked device credit service port in 90 plus days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required Card is no cash access and expires in six months.