We’re in the final month of the year so it’s time to take a look at the book-related goals I set myself at the beginning of the year and see how I’ve got on.
Achieve my Goodreads target of reading 104 books – I’ve read 100 so far meaning I’m on track.
Read at least 25 books that have been in my TBR pile for longer than two years – I’ve only managed twelve at the moment so this looks out of reach.
Attend Henley Literary Festival and at least one other literary festival in person – Achieved, I attended three events at this year’s Henley Literary Festival and one event at Falmouth Books Festival.
Complete the What’s in a Name Challenge 2024– I’ve managed to match 5 of the 6 prompts but the final one – a book title involving footwear – has eluded me.
Complete the 20 Books of Summer 2024 reading challenge – By my strict rules I failed because I didn’t read all the books on my original list, but most others would say I succeeded because I read 20+ books during the period of the challenge.
Read all the books on The Walter Scott Prize 2024 shortlist before the winner is announced – Nearly. There was one I didn’t get to – The Upper Country by Kai Thomas
Complete my Backlist Burrow challenge – I’ve only managed to read one more from my list – All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman – so this challenge will have to roll over to next year.
Maintain a 95%+ feedback ratio on NetGalley – Achieved, my ratio is currently 97%.
If you set any book-related goals for 2024, how have you got on?
After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha, a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain.
But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish – the electricity is finally arriving. With it comes a lodger to Noel’s home, Christy McMahon. Though he can’t explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.
As Noel navigates his coming-of-age by Christy’s side, falling in and out of love, Christy’s buried past gradually comes to light, casting a glow on a small world and making it new.
Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can’t explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.
As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy’s past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.
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My Review
I acquired this book when it appeared on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2020. Sadly, it’s been languishing on my bookshelf ever since but when I noticed the author’s new book, Time of the Child, was on NetGalley and realised it was set once again in Faha and features some of the same characters, I was spurred on to read it – finally. And how glad am I because it is utterly delightful.
Our narrator is Noel Crowe, looking back sixty years to his time living in the small village of Faha with his grandparents, the wonderful Doady and Ganga. There is a ‘Faha way’ of doing things, and that way hasn’t changed for quite a long time. The pace of life is slow. But the village and its inhabitants are on the cusp of change with the coming of electricity.
For seventeen-year-old Noel, change also comes with the arrival of Christy McMahon – ‘the electric man’ – who takes up residence as a lodger in his grandparent’s home. To Noel, Christy is the epitome of a man of the world, possessed of countless stories about his colourful life and full of mature wisdom. Christy exposes Noel to new experiences as they travel the countryside on bicycles visiting pubs and listening to folk music. Noel reflects, ‘Main point is, it seems to me every life has a few gleaming times, times when things were brighter, more intense and urgent, had more life in them I suppose. In mine, this was one’.
Noel looks back with good-natured amusement at the actions of his younger self. For example, his sometimes farcical attempts to attract the attention of, at one time or another, the three daughters of Doctor Troy.
The author populates Faha with charmingly idiosyncratic characters and there are some brilliantly funny scenes, such as the meeting arranged to demonstrate the labour-saving appliances people will be able to own once they have electricity, such as a toaster that will mean ‘no more smoky toast’. In response to which Noel observes that ‘no one in Faha ate toast and smoky was not a term of denigration’.
When Noel discovers the real reason Christy has returned to Faha, he attempts to bring about a reconciliation that will enable Christy to make up for past actions. But life isn’t as simple as that, as Noel will discover, giving rise to some very moving scenes towards the end of the book.
It wouldn’t be a book set in Ireland without a focus on the weather and the author describes it in a beguilingly exuberant way that may not to be everyone’s taste but certainly was to mine. Faha is generally a place of incessant rain. ‘Rain was falling, though not exactly. Rain in Clare chose intercourse with wind, all kinds, without discrimination, and came any way it could, wantonly.’ Then, coinciding with Easter, Faha experiences a rare and unexpected heatwave. ‘Down the road the Miniters put their white, blind hairnetted grandmother outside in her armchair where she sat in a citrus dream of Spain… Set outside, big-jointed furniture creaked an asymptotic series of aches that soon went unremarked because it was understood to be the bone-music of resurrection.’
This Is Happiness is a gentle portrait of a rural community, an engaging coming-of age story and – for me – a delight from start to finish.
In three words: Tender, funny, heartwarming Try something similar: The Geometer Lobachevskyby Adrian Duncan
About the Author
Photo: John Kelly
Niall Williams was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of nine novels, including History of the Rain, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and Four Letters of Love, set to be a major motion picture. This Is Happiness was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Book of the Year and longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize.
He lives in Kiltumper in County Clare, Ireland with his wife, Christine. (Bio: Publisher author page)
We’re in the final month of the year so it’s time to take a look at the book-related goals I set myself at the beginning of the year and see how I’ve got on.
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