Irish Central

IrishCentr­al Book of the Month: "This Is Happiness” by Niall Williams

- IrishCentr­al Staff

“This is Happiness” by Niall Williams is the May 2024 selection for the IrishCentr­al Book Club.

Each month, we will pick a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author and celebrate the amazing ability of the Irish to tell a good story for the IrishCentr­al Book Club .

“This Is Happiness” is described as a profound and enchanting bestsellin­g novel from Booker Prize-long-listed author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscin­g. Published in 2019 by Bloomsbury Press, “This Is Happiness” was named a best book of the year’ by The Washington Post and Real Simple.

Synopsis of “This Is Hap‐ piness” by Niall Williams

You don' t see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed.

The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now-- just as Father Coff ey proclaims the coming of electricit­y--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparen­ts' house shortly aft er the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.

This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experience­s falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricit­y--a developmen­t that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries.

Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricatel­y observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncra­sies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and

its triumphs. Luminous and otherworld­ly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us. IrishCentr­al Book Club Looking for Irish book recommenda­tions or to meet with others who share your love for Irish literature? Join IrishCentr­al’s Book Club on Facebook and enjoy our book- loving community. "Escaping into the pages of 'This Is Happiness' feels as much like time travel as enlightenm­ent. Halfway through, I realized that if I didn't stop underlinin­g passages, the whole book would be underlined ... Williams is engaged int he careful labor of teaching us to hear the subtler melodies drowned out by the din of modern life ... This is a story about the beginnings of love and the persistenc­e of aff ection, about the loss of faith and the recovering of belief. If you're a reader of a certain frame of mind, craving a novel of delicate wit laced with rare wisdom, this, truly, is happiness." - Ron Charles, Washington Post. "This big-hearted story is an intimate study of a small place on the brink of change." - New York Times.

"An oft en delightful, rural rhapsody." - Wall Street Journal. "A breathtaki­ng tale ... Williams, a Man Booker Prize-long-listed author for his 'History of the Rain,' is a master of Irish storytelli­ng, craft ing sentences that tempt the reader to double back and read again - and characters that get under your skin." - The Associated Press. "Warm and whimsical, sometimes sorrowful, but always expressed in curlicues of Irish lyricism, this charming book makes varied use of its electrical metaphor, not least to express the flickering pulse of humanity. A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review.

Niall Williams was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels, including “History of the Rain,” which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and “Four Letters of Love,” which will soon be a major motion picture starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter, and Gabriel Byrne. His most recent novel, “This Is Happiness” was shortliste­d for the Irish Book Awards Book of the Year and longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize. He lives in Kiltumper in County Clare, Ireland. (Synopsis, reviews, and biographic­alinformat­ion from Bloomsbury.)

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