This is Happiness

Williams, Niall. This is happiness. London : Bloomsbury, 2019.

In the 1950s, a rural Irish village is on the cusp of modernity as the promise of long-awaited electricity is finally making it to the west of the island.  Noel Crowe, Noe for short, is a failed seminarian who has retreated to his grandparents’ home to reconsider his future.  There the entire village of Faha is abuzz with electricity men planting poles, stringing wires and hooking up thatch-roofed stone dwellings.  One of these men, Christy, becomes a lodger with Noe’s grandparents.

Christy is older than the rest of the electrical workers, but Noe and the old lodger quickly hit it off and Noe learns it is not electricity that has brought Christy to Faha.  In fact, he has come to seek the forgiveness of a woman he long-ago left at the altar.  Noe is drawn by Christy’s charm and enthusiasm and becomes a partner in his mission.

The true beauty of This is Happiness is Niall Williams’ wonderful writing.  He fills the fictitious Faha with scores of characters who are unique and quirky and easily come to life.  The novel begins with the ever-present rain abating giving the Fahians rare, glorious sunshine.  However, that sun does not retreat, leaving the locals eventually wishing the sun would go away, at least for a bit.

Under the blazing sun and the buzz of electrical work going on everywhere, Noe and Christy traverse Faha, attempting to mend fences, woo a doctor’s daughters, bicycle from pub to pub and even get crushed by a telephone pole.  The relationship between the elder man and narrator is a poignant one and both learn a great deal from each other by the time the tiny village of Faha is lit up by modernity for the very first time.

James D. is the Public Service Manager at the Mebane Public Library.