“This is Happiness” by Irish author Niall Williams is a hymn to storytelling and the simple joy of being alive.
Set in the fictional remote rural village of Faha in County Clare, this coming-of-age novel tells the story of Noel Crowe, a 17-year-old seminary school dropout who returns to his grandparents’ home in spring 1958, just as the rain lets up and electricity and a mysterious stranger, Christy McMahon, are about to arrive.
An unusual friendship springs up between the boy and the man as the former wrestles with his future and the latter grapples with his past; a past overshadowed by remorse towards his former betrothed, the village chemist Annie Mooney, who now bows to his need for atonement and allows the telling of his story since he abandoned her at the altar half a century earlier to do the healing between them.
This is, in fact, essentially a novel about the power of stories to shape and give meaning to human experience, including one’s own.
Tender and lyrical, Williams’s beautifully crafted and soul-stirring prose is the true protagonist here, as it gives expression to the universal themes of love, loss and human connection. There is barely a sentence that does not jump out from the page and demand to be relished – or quoted. Here are just a few of my favourites:
“A story grows in the gaps where the facts fall short.”
“Do I exaggerate? Of course I do. The Truth doesn’t care.”
“We all have to find a story to live by and live inside, or we couldn’t endure the certainty of suffering.”
“We can all pause right here, raise our head, take a breath and accept that This is Happiness.”
The last quote gives the title to the book, and reminds us that, even in the midst of pain and suffering, happiness is to be found in the simple, but no less extraordinary, fact of being alive.