Page-turning debut gets to the heart of human emotion
FICTION This Happy Niamh Campbell Weidenfeld & Nicolson €16.99
FEW books stay with me in the way that the debut novel of Niamh Campbell (inset) has done, changing the way I think about people, relationships and the world. The story begins with Alannah, a Dublin-based academic and writer, glimpsing the landlady who was witness, seven years before, to her brief but passionate affair with Harry, a much older, married English playwright.
Alannah walks us through her complicated relationship with her recently acquired husband. A man who comes with more baggage than a royal state visit, he has unrealistic political ambitions with a right-wing party (Alannah is a socialist) and two children from previous liaisons, one of them extant when he began seeing Alannah. Largely conducted in Glasnevin Cemetery, their secret two-month courtship culminated in a marriage proposal. “But afterwards I realised that he believed getting married to me would stop everyone — everyone in his life, including his family and friends — from trying with alternate slyness and vigour to persuade him that he ought to stop f *cking about and go back, go back and marry and live with the mother of his youngest child.”
Seeing the landlady triggers memories of former lover Harry and an analysis of the effects of their illicit affair, begun when Alannah was only 23.
While this is the story of Alannah and her personal interactions with others — lovers, friends, parents — it is not just a reflection on relationships and memory. It’s a meaty page-turner in which the comings and goings from past
to present keep the reader rapt and fully invested in what Alannah might do next.
There is a poetry to Campbell’s prose that brings us to the very heart of human emotion without ever straying into sentimentality. Dialogue is natural and incisive, lending authenticity to each conversation.
Earthy, truthful sex is handled with a light touch, and beautifully succinct descriptions of people, places and moods abound.
“Right before that is the birth of my husband’s eldest child and torpedoing of his career in politics, the point at which my husband experienced a moral ossification that preserved him mentally, emotionally and spiritually at about the age of 22, and as it happens that year I made my Confirmation: firmly, resolutely, flat-chestedly, in buckled boots, like a streak of self-esteem.”
This Happy is not one long examination of troubled emotions either; rather it is packed with wit, love and a host of well-rounded characters.
“I stared forth with the glassy stare I once reserved for boring coffee-dates, for men whose conversation consisted of anecdotes in which they triumphed over a series of inexplicably antagonistic co-workers and car mechanics.”
This novel can’t be skimmed. It is to be savoured, luxuriating in Campbell’s glorious phrasing; worth reading for gems like “a bolshie sprezzatura gesture” alone. Although Campbell’s writing is unique, for me this book is reminiscent, in its attention to detail and the depth of its examination of human relations, of Anne Enright’s work. I can give a debut novel no higher praise.