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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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Summary

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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Absolutely adored this book. Evocative, thoughtful, emotional and just beautiful. All 6 people in my bookclub rated this as one of their favourite all time books. Thank you.

Outstanding

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This book is an astounding lesson in literature. Every sentence is like poetry, artfully painting a picture. I love the fact that little happens, instead it’s a slow moving story of human life.

Beautifully written

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I’ve never enjoyed a book as much in 60 years of reading. The descriptions and humour are wonderful, finishing it made me realise that the bar is now so high, future reads will struggle to reach it.

Genius story telling and perfect narration.

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This is a story full to overflowing with love and joy and sorrow and wonder that is all engrossing. The language is poetic and funny and it carries the reader along like a river. I loved the telling of this story from beginning to end and would happily listen to it all again like a favourite symphony.

Exquisite

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This book was recommended by a friend. It took me a couple of chapters to get into it, but once I’d got accustomed to the narrator’s wonderful Irish accent, the gentle almost ‘by the way’ humour & the even gentler storyline, I was hooked! It was perhaps less of a story than the evocation of a time & a place, describing life in a west of Ireland village through the eyes of teenager Noel, or “No” as he’s called, who is being brought up by his grandparents. It describes his friendship with Christy, an older man who comes to the village to pave the way for the introduction of electricity to the village, while discovering the real reason Christy has chosen to come to Faha is to right a 50 year old wrong.
Thoroughly enjoyed it!

Slow burner!

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