To use a word that appears often in the novel, “Child Time” is a miracle.

Niall Williams’ gorgeous, wry and humane book is set in the fictional Irish hamlet of Faha, where much of his work (which also includes Four Love Letters andThis Is Happiness”) takes place.

It’s 1962 and it’s getting close to Christmas, which is important because the book’s events—which are foreshadowed for 100 pages and then seem to happen all at once—are reminiscent of the life of the figure for whom Christmas is named. A child is found outside, dies, then comes back to life. And the question of who will accept the child hangs over the rest of the book.

“Child’s Time” may have the best sentences of any novel this year. Williams has an extraordinary gift for describing shabby Faha, as in this little gem characterizing a rooming house where “the whole interior was without a straight line, each wall only fulfilling the duty of a ceiling.”

He’s equally good at character details that bring people to life, such as a trio of sisters whose worldviews are set as soon as they meet their first bottles of milk: “Sophie who almost fell asleep while she was feeding, Charlotte who would not take the bottle and Ronnie who reached out to try and hold her by herself. Even the idiosyncratic use of commas in that sentence seems meant to tell us how different the three sisters are from each other.

Ronnie is the one the book is most concerned with. When the little girl is found, she is brought to Ronnie and her father, Dr. Jack Troy, who practices outside their home. Jack sees how important the baby is to Ronnie, so he tries to keep her a secret rather than send her into the care of the government. This is partly because Jack blames himself for thwarting Ronnie’s romantic prospects, but also because both Jack and Ronnie mourn the wife/mother who was taken from them at a young age and whom Ronnie makes his echoed in her interactions with the child: “Ronnie floated in a doubled peace, where she was both the one holding the child and the one being held.”

It’s an essentially realistic book, lovingly observing the details of its characters’ everyday lives, but there’s also an element of quiet magic. First, the subject of the child’s biological parentage is barely broached, as if it were understood that she was destined to be placed in a Faha alley on a cold winter night. And while the narrator of “Child’s Time” is never revealed, it is clear that he is someone who knows the people well and who makes room in the story for his readers.

Williams’ story uses reading, which I would argue is a kind of magic, both as a plot point (Charlotte’s theft of Ronnie’s book is character-defining) and metaphor, such as the reference to Jack “having the same feeling as all readers approaching the narrow end of a book: How will this end?”