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

“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-longlisted 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 Happiness” 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 Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after 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.

Reviews for “This Is Happiness” by Niall Williams

"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 affection, 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 often delightful, rural rhapsody." - Wall Street Journal.

"A breathtaking tale ... Williams, a Man Booker Prize-longlisted author for his 'History of the Rain,' is a master of Irish storytelling, crafting 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.

About Niall Williams

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 biographical information from Bloomsbury.)