This Is Happiness

Admirers of Niall Williams’s Booker-longlisted History of the Rain will not be disappointed to learn that his latest novel is possibly even better … What makes this so compelling and enjoyable is Williams’s transparent love of his characters and delight in his setting -- Alexander Larman * Observer *
Charming is one word for Williams’ prose. It is also life-affirming and written with a turn of phrase that makes the reader want to underline something on every page. I suggest we all buy his books, pushing him into that realm of globally fashionable Irish writers, but more importantly, sharing with a vast audience his humane and poetic world view -- Isabel Berwick * Financial Times *
Williams has the eye of a poet and the raconteur’s knack for finding a tale in the most unpromising nook of everyday life, as a now-adult Noel, summoning the Faha of his nostalgic imagination, narrates an elegiac novel that’s careful always to offset the antic rural eccentricity with darker notes of loss * Daily Mail *
This is Happiness returns to the beguiling gloom of Faha … [A] wise and redemptive novel … It dares, in addition, to be wildly comic … With his silver ear for speech and extreme attentiveness to the Heaneyesque “music of everyday”, Mr Williams treads softly on the dreams of youth and memories of old age -- Caroline Jackson * Country Life *
Lovingly written, the text is brimming with humanity, truth and humour – and then there’s the pitch perfect language, with not a word out of place … Magnificent -- Sue Leonard * Irish Examiner *
Sharp as a tack, bright as a button, and engorged with rich humour, this is a love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone * Irish Independent *
A surge of language, beautiful and enchanting, a novel that weaves a love of literature into its own moving tale -- Praise for 'History of the Rain' * Guardian *
Extremely moving, poignantly capturing Ruth’s doomed childhood relationship with her twin brother. By the final chapter I was weeping -- Praise for 'History of the Rain' * Sunday Times *
Deeply allusive, infectiously hopeful … Somewhere between bildungsroman, epic and family saga, History of the Rain is an unashamedly unfashionable, lyrical paean to the pleasure of reading and to serendipity -- Praise for 'History of the Rain' * Daily Telegraph *
A delicate and graceful love story that is also an exaltation of love itself . . . A luminously written, magical work of fiction -- Praise for 'Four Letters of Love' * New York Times Book Review *
A book that I am rereading in an attempt to figure out the magic and calm my soul -- Kate DiCamillo * New York Times Book Review *