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Book Reviewed by:A profound and enchanting new 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.
Excerpt
This is Happiness
It had stopped raining.
Nobody in Faha could remember when it started. Rain there on the western seaboard was a condition of living. It came straight-down and sideways, frontwards, backwards and any other wards God could think of. It came in sweeps, in waves, sometimes in veils. It came dressed as drizzle, as mizzle, as mist, as showers, frequent and widespread, as a wet fog, as a damp day, a drop, a dreeping, and an out-and-out downpour. It came the fine day, the bright day, and the day promised dry. It came at any time of the day and night, and in all seasons, regardless of calendar and forecast, until in Faha your clothes were rain and your skin was rain and your house was rain with a fireplace. It came off the grey vastness of an Atlantic that threw itself against the land like a lover once spurned and resolved not to be so again. It came accompanied by seagulls and smells of salt and seaweed. It came with cold air and curtained light. It came like a ...
1000 Books April 2026 Read: The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien
I finished the audio version of this a couple of days ago and I'm really happy that I had the chance to "read" it. I thought it was an odd book from the standpoint that the author's focus kept shifting, so I was never quite sure what her intent was. It started out as a character sketch of people ...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (4/30/2026)
Just finished This Is Happiness by Niall Williams, just beautiful writing, the descriptions, the characters - a time in Ireland when a rural village is just beginning to get - and accept electricity...
-Susan_W
2026 first quarter besties
Oooh, I love this! Thanks, Anne! Absolute top of my list: https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4036/this-is-happiness This is Happiness by Niall Willams Others I loved: https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5150/the-sound-and-the-fury The Sound and the Fury ...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (4/02/2026)
Oh, definitely pick up a copy of Niall Williams' This Is Happiness , @Gabi_J . It was such a marvelous, poignant yet feel-good novel. I listened to it in audiobook format and the narrator was perfect . I haven't read Time of the Child yet. It seems to get mentioned every Christmas so I'm saving f...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/12/2026)
I'm about half way through "This is Happiness" by Niall Williams and am enjoying it very much. Also reading "Another Country" by james Baldwin and am enjoying"The Known World" by Edward P. Jones. To top it off, my book club is about halfway through "Joseph and His Brothers" by Thomas Mann.
-Donna_I
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/8/2026)
...kins Reid for a book club discussion. In audiobook format, I finished https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4036/this-is-happiness This Is Happiness by Niall Williams. What a lovely read, and I highly recommend it in audio - the narrator was wonderful. It's laugh-out-loud funny at times but also bittersweet, too. I...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/1/2026)
I finished This Is Happiness by Niall Williams in audiobook format yesterday and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Williams' gentle humor and keen depiction of this small, rural, Irish town was...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (12/25/2025)
...isa_B3 , it's been years since I read any Wodehouse. Thanks for the reminder! I'll need to add that author to my list of fun reads. I've just started This is Happiness by Niall Williams myself, and it's such a pleasant read. I'm so glad the folks here recommended this author.
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (12/18/2025)
Did you read This is Happiness ? I haven't read it yet but it was Niall Williams' first book about Faha. It is supposed to be excellent.
-Gabi_J
What are you reading this week? (6/12/2025)
This is Happiness by Niall Williams
-John_B1
What are you reading this week? (5/8/2025)
Just finished This is Happiness by Niall Williams, a gentle love letter to a tiny pre-electitrification1940's Irish village. The exquisitely detailed descriptions of the village and its inhabitants s...
-Nancy_B
What are you reading this week? (02/27/2025)
I have just finished reading Time of the Child by Niall Williams. This book is a beautiful piece of prose and it is truly one of the best novels that I have read in several years. I highly recommend this book and am looking forward to reading his earlier work, including This is Happiness.
-Laurie_L
What are you reading this week? (12-26-2024)
I just finished This is Happiness by Niall Williams and loved it so I immediately started Time of the Child. It is not actually a sequel, more of a companion novel. Same setting but focuses on differen...
-Judi_Ross
Particularly given this narrative structure—an old man recalling his youthful exploits—This Is Happiness could easily veer into the realms of sentimentality, but it never does. There's a type of nostalgia, to be sure, especially as Faha—like the rest of rural Ireland—sits on the brink of an entirely new way of life. But there's no wistful longing to bring back those days of yore—just an honest reckoning that, as fondly as those days and people and adventures may be remembered, they now exist only as memories, recalled with genuine appreciation of having not only witnessed but truly lived through such times...continued
Full Review
(656 words)
(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
The personal events of Niall Williams's This Is Happiness are sparked by the impending arrival of electricity to Faha, a tiny hamlet in rural Ireland. The gradual electrification of this largely rural country was a decades-long process that extended over much of the middle part of the 20th century and that has been called the Quiet Revolution because of the extent to which it transformed the lives of ordinary Irish people.
Electricity—largely fueled by local and privately held companies—had existed in Dublin since the late 19th century. But beginning in the 1920s, two developments began to pave the way for broader electrical reach. First, the Irish government approved an initiative to install a hydroelectric plant tied to ...
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