Skip to product information
This Is Happiness - Ingram
  • This Is Happiness - Ingram
This Is Happiness

This Is Happiness

By Niall Williams

$18.99

The November 2025 Late Show Book Club Pick!

"I am such a fan of Niall Williams." -Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake

A profound and enchanting novel set in the rural Irish village of Faha, from bestselling Time of the Child author Niall Williams, about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing.

The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.

This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries.

Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.

Niall's other novels set in Faha include History of the Rain and Time of the Child, which are both available now!

Book details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
August 31, 2021
ISBN
9781635576313
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing
Pages
400
Language
English
BISAC
Fiction, Literary, Coming of Age, Small Town & Rural, Family Life, Multigenerational, Parenthood & Children, Historical, 20th Century - General, World Literature, Ireland - 20th Century
Themes
Coming of Age, Rural, Small Town, Family, 20th Century, Ireland
Related subjects
Communities, Secrecy, Manners and customs, Rites and ceremonies, Rural electrification, Ireland, Novels, Interpersonal relations, Bildungsromans

You may also like