This Is Happiness

Thanks to Bloomsbury for an advance copy of this title, back when the hardcover came out at the end of 2019 (paperback was supposed to be released Dec 2020, but it's been pushed to Aug 2021 due to the pandemic)--

If you're looking for a nice, lyrical slow-read novel about the beauty of small towns and the people who inhabit them, Niall Williams' This Is Happiness is an excellent choice. The book follows Noel Crowe--a young man who's trying to decide whether or not to devote his life to the church; in the meantime, he takes a break from the seminary and stays with his grandparents in the Irish parish of Faha.

Faha is generally a stable place where life revolves around religion and nothing much changes, but the arrival of electricity is officially imminent. The man who's in charge of the installation, Christy, ends up staying as a lodger with Noel and his grandparents, and the narrative largely focuses on the relationship between these two unlikely companions. Christy and Noel ride bikes together, get fantastically drunk, partake in the local music scene, and try to convince the townspeople that wiring their homes for electricity is a good thing. But Christy has a secret--relating to his true reason for coming to Faha--that will have an enormous impact on Noel's life.

Niall Williams' sentences are always a marvel, whether he's describing church pew rituals or local gossips perching on bar stools or the gorgeous green land of Ireland. This Is Happiness is ultimately a story about the future, or about the inevitable progression of time. The future, in the form of technology, is coming to Faha, no matter whether the residents want it to or not. But it's up to them to decide how to respond to that fact--and to figure out how to live with their neighbors' decisions.