This Is Happiness

I loved this book because Niall Williams transported me to Faha, a small Irish parish in western Ireland on the verge of having electricity installed, and I happily lived there with the characters at the crossroads into modernity and didn’t want my visit to end.

I worked on a documentary in Ireland in 1983, lived with Irish families, visited pubs, and listened to live music, and this book happily brought me back. Williams’s veneration for Irish humor, music and musicians is clear in his writing that captures the lyricism of the music and poetry. He describes poignant moments with such… show more.

From page one, I fell in love with the language of the book, its meandering pace, and the voice and temperament of the narrator.

At 78, Noe Crowe looks back on the year he lived with his grandparents in a remote County Clare village when he was 17. His time there coincides with the arrival of electricity in western Ireland, an event that will change a way of life that has been the same for centuries.

Noe befriends his grandparents’ lodger Christy—an older man who is an equal parts conman, dreamer, and guru—and their adventures, along with the convoluted progress… show more.

This is Happiness is an enchanting, big-hearted, and unhurried novel about a small Irish village in the 1950s or 60s that is on the brink of change.

The prose is exquisite and descriptive, as authentic a book as any I’ve read. I almost wish I listened to the audio version because it is a treat to read aloud and hear every single word.

I couldn’t help writing down the many philosophical nuggets I wanted to savor.

This was one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Every sentence and turn of phrase was a gem.

It transported me to this small Irish village and introduced me to an eccentric and lovable group of characters. Every time I picked up this book, I felt as though I were taking an amble through town that I could picture vividly.

This book is happiness. 

Okay, but here’s the thing: It takes about 30 pages for Niall Williams to hit his stride. There’s a lot about weather at first, the whole Irish rain situation. Stick with it. Once Christy comes on the scene in this small Irish town, Faha, and is hoping to have a meeting with a woman he left at the alter 30 years before, and once our young narrator gets involved in his plan—BAM. 

The reader is fully in the world of Faha as electricity is introduced into the village, as Noel begins to figure out love… show more.

Gentle, soft, and full of humor, This is Happiness is told through the narration of a 78-year-old seminarian dropout in Ireland circa 1920.

The story is an oral history of a fictional town as modern ideas of electricity begin to arrive. Niall Williams writes with some of the most gorgeous prose I’ve ever read about Ireland's weather and landscape. He takes time to linger on small, intimate moments of his characters from teenage embarrassments to first loves to visiting your grandparents.

Williams creates a fictional town that is so real and hopeful despite being so "behind the times." Williams argues… show more.

Because it made me laugh out loud, for starters. Early in the pandemic, when I needed something to put a little color into my outlook, I encountered Niall Williams’s novel about the happenings in an Irish village in 1958. It is a coming-of-age novel, concerning one Noe Crowe, who comes to live with his grandparents at a time when their tiny and quite backward village is about to get electricity for the first time. The characters, including Noe’s grandparents and their mysterious boarder, Christy, as well as the other people of the town, are drawn beautifully, and young Noe’s misadventures… show more.

By far the best book I have read in a decade, Williams’ gifts as a writer are many but this book stands out for the pitch-perfect ‘ear’ he has for the Irish dialect. The story is a simple tale of love set against the history of electricity coming to rural Ireland, and two men who help each other find their path to love. The characters are immaculately drawn and find their footing within the details of the insular countryside of early 20th c. Ireland. We experience cycling the country roads, visiting the rural pubs, and following the seasons of… show more.

Clearly, I have a soft spot for stories about small towns in foreign places, and the people who inhabit them, steeped in the deep ways of village life, bearing the consequences of their collective failures and aspirations. This story, of a small Irish village in rural County Clare facing the unexpected approach of progress, is remarkable not just for the uniqueness of its characters, but for the brilliance of William’s writing. Each sentence is a masterpiece, each surprising phrase music to the ears: hopeful, alive and forlorn. Who would not travel to this place, to be among that kind of… show more.