This Is Happiness
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Book Overview
Niall Williams's new novel, Time of the Child, is available now
"I am such a fan of Niall Williams." -Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake A profound and enchanting bestselling novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing. You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed. 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. Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. 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.Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1635576318
ISBN13:9781635576313
Release Date:August 2021
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing
Length:400 Pages
Weight:0.93 lbs.
Dimensions:1.2" x 5.6" x 8.3"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Brilliant
Published by BarbaraCarol , 11 months ago
I had no preconceived ideas about this book. Purchased after I read a review online; Niall Williams was unfamiliar to me. But now! Now, I think he’s pretty darn brilliant. Mr. Williams takes a sleepy, gentle village full of salt of the earth people and allows readers to really know them. Their lives on the verge of changing with the introduction of electricity, shifts from uncomplicated with such depth to modern convenience. But oh, the characters. I felt like I’d always known them. Almost every page has a quote worth sharing. This quiet and serene story, that I took time to savor, has won my heart.
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