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This Is Happiness

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This Is Happiness

By: Niall Williams
Narrated by: Dermot Crowley
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About this listen

Change is coming to Faha, a small Irish parish unaltered in a 1,000 years.

For one thing, the rain is stopping. Nobody remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard is a condition of living. But now - just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of the electricity - the rain clouds are lifting.

Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.

As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy's past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.

Harking back to a simpler time, This Is Happiness is a tender portrait of a community - its idiosyncrasies and traditions, its paradoxes and kindnesses, its failures and triumphs - and a coming-of-age tale like no other.

Luminous and lyrical, yet anchored by roots running deep into the earthy and everyday, it is about the power of stories: their invisible currents that run through all we do, writing and rewriting us, and the transforming light that they throw onto our world.

©2019 Niall Williams (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd
Coming of Age Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Small Town & Rural Inspiring Feel-Good Heartfelt Funny Tear-jerking Thought-Provoking Witty

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All stars
Most relevant
This book is pure heaven. I could not stop listening. The narrator is absolutely perfect for the book. The writing is lyrical and poignant profound and funny at times. The whole story went straight into my heart.

I’m so glad to have discovered this wonderful writer.

Such a beautiful book

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A story of love, change and enduring happiness - the tale of modern meeting eternal. Excellent

A deep music of words

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Relaxing . Beautifully read . Soft amusing story of very real life . I very much enjoyed it .

Brilliant

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This wonderful book is a fabulous bringing to life of an old Ireland being brought into the modern world by the arrival of electricity to the village. But it is so much more than that. All life is expressed through the story, heartache and tragedy, comedy and love. Ultimately it's about living in the moment, the essential joy of being with other people and of savouring the simple pleasure of being alive.

This is also a perfect example of an audio book bringing a story to life in a way that simply can't be achieved on the page. Dermot Crowley's narration so totally inhabits the character of Noel that is hard to remember that he is not the author, and that the story is actually a fiction, albeit one based firmly in the reality of rural Clare, 60 years ago,

Wonderfully Evocative and Life Affirming

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I was carried away to Faha that I feel I knew the characters . Writing and narration of equal brilliance

A gem

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