Review of This Is Happiness by Niall Williams

This is gorgeous Niall Williams literary fiction, centering around an Irish country village, a young man searching for his path, and his unofficial mentor, zigzagging his way through life, embracing adventure, and bridging the gap between the old ways and modernity. Quiet connections and reflections make the story, with understated poignancy, humor, and heartbreaking moments that bring the book's world to life.

We’re all, all the time, striving, and though that means there’s a more-or-less constant supply of failure, it’s not such a terrible thing if you think that we keep on trying. There’s something to consider for that.

In the rural Irish village of Faha, in County Clare, the years-long rain (whether sprinkling, torrential, misting, steady dripping) is stopping, and electricity seems poised to finally move from "the notional" to "the actual," as Father Coffey proclaims.

Young Noe (short for "Noel") has abandoned the seminary but is unsure of his next steps, and he takes refuge at his beloved grandparents' cottage in the village.

A stranger, Christy, arrives to begin coordinating the installation of electricity in the area, and he boards with Noe at Ganga and Doady's home. He is older, kind, capable, yet somewhat lost, and he's bent on making amends for past mistakes. He and Noe begin going on periodic nighttime excursions quest to try to see a legendary but elusive Irish musician, and Christy reveals that he is on a greater mission to find and apologize to a woman in the village who he wronged long ago.

That was one of the things about him. He walked this line between the comic and the poignant, between the certainly doomed and the hopelessly hopeful. In time I came to think it the common ground of all humanity.

As their friendship begins, Noe feels privileged to exist within his new idol's world, but we witness Noe's emotional maturity grow during the course of story. He's simultaneously falling in love with a family of sisters, considering his future, witnessing his grandparents' heartbreaking aging (as well as their their somewhat inexplicable but undeniable loyalty to each other), and witnessing the change in the community forever as modernity pushes into their homes and businesses.

This Is Happiness explores the small moments that make up a life worth living as well as explorations of the meaning of existence, religion, spirituality, reconciliation, commitment, and facing death.

It was where, when darkness fell, it fell absolutely, and when you went outside the wind sometimes drew apart the clouds and you stood in the revelation of so many stars you could not credit the wonder and felt smaller in body as your soul felt enormous.

I adore this novel and its countless gorgeous passages, its understated, poignant, heartbreaking elements, and its unexpected moments of connection and beauty. When I was almost finished reading my (overdue) library copy, I bought a copy for a friend's birthday gift and ordered another for myself so I could finish reading it at my leisure and keep it forever.

Noe's character feels written as younger than his age, but I easily disregarded this disconnect as I immersed myself in the story.

Story was the stuff of life, and to realise you were inside one allowed you to sometimes surrender to the plot, to bear a little easier the griefs and sufferings and to enjoy more fully the twists that came along the way.

On my first venture out of the country, I traveled to London and to a small town in County Clare, Ireland, with my cousin and aunt and uncle, and while this story is set well before I ever visited, Williams's rich descriptions of the countryside evoked wonderfully nostalgic feelings for me.

More Niall Williams Love

For my review of Niall Williams's lovely Time of the Child, please click this link.

Williams is also the author of Four Letters of Love, As It Is In Heaven, The Fall of Light, Only Say the Word, Boy in the World, Boy and Man, John, and History of the Rain.