Category: 20 Books of Summer

Book Review – This Is Happiness by Niall Williams ‘Life is a comedy, with sad bits’

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About the Book

Book cover of This Is Happiness by Niall Williams

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.

Format: Paperback (400 pages) Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication date: 9th July 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction

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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 Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan

About the Author

Author Niall Williams
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)

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Book Review – A Place Without Pain by Simon Bourke @Simon_Bourke28

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About the Book

Book cover of A Place Without Pain by Simon Bourke

Aidan Collins has always been an outsider, a weirdo, an oddball. But the arrival of his worldly, urbane cousin Dan, changes his life completely. Dan introduces Aidan to alcohol, to girls, to a life beyond the four walls of his bedroom, and eventually, to the night out to end all nights out in Dublin.

What he sees in the capital, what he’s exposed to, also changes Aidan’s life, but not in a good way. A scene behind a closed door haunts him, torments him, leaving behind scars which may never heal.

Format: ebook (518 pages) Publisher:
Publication date: 30th January 2024 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

Simon Bourke’s first book, And The Birds Kept On Singing published in 2017, is one I frequently recommend as deserving more attention. It’s one of those books that only has a few reviews but those it has are overwhelmingly positive. So I was delighted when Simon got in touch to let me know he had published his second novel. You can read my Q&A with Simon about A Place Without Pain here.

The author really gets under the skin of the book’s narrator, Aidan Collins. It’s fair to say he’s a troubled soul, crippled with anxiety that means he hides away in his bedroom for much of the time, playing computer games, watching films or porn. It’s his way of escaping from a world which frankly frightens him, where he feels he doesn’t fit in. Although intelligent, he’s never had a job, relying instead on welfare payments. His solution to problems or challenging situations is to ignore them or run away from them. ‘Everyone hates you. You’d better not go out. Stay here where it’s safe.’ When opportunities do present themselves he often wastes them, leaving him filled with self-loathing at his own failures.

You’d think from this that Aidan is a pretty unlikeable character but, in the hands of the author, you can’t help rooting for him even if at times you’re left completely exasperated by his actions. My overriding feeling was one of sadness particularly when just as it seems things are looking up something happens to propel him back into misery. There were moments I wanted to cheer and others where I found myself thinking, ‘Oh, Aidan, Aidan, why are you doing that?’. Sadly, the latter were more frequent than the former.

The traumatic event Aidan witnesses on a rare night out is a psychological scar he carries throughout his life. He’s plagued with guilt about what he did, or rather didn’t do. He should have been a hero, instead he knows he was a coward. It sort of epitomises what his life has been like. In an effort to bury the memories of what he witnessed, to find the place without pain of the book’s title, he turns to alcohol and drugs. They welcome him with a warm embrace. ‘I was a child of the drink now’. For a long time his days are one long round of visits to the off-licence and drinking himself into a stupor. His parents are either passively complicit or unable to find a way to modify his behaviour. The drink doesn’t stop the pain or his feelings of despair and utter worthlessness. As he observes, ‘the booze was proving an abusive parent.’

Only a chance encounter stops him from taking an irrevocable step. It sets him on a new path, one which offers the promise of turning his life around if only he can break the cycle of self-destructive behaviour. But maybe believing yourself to be a hero is just as dangerous as believing yourself a failure.

Aidan’s story is an emotional rollercoaster with slow ascents followed by dizzying drops. It will take you to dark places and includes some scenes that are difficult to read. The epitome of a character-led book, A Place Without Pain is a hard-hitting story of loneliness and the struggle to overcome your demons.

My thanks to the author for my digital review copy.

In three words: Powerful, gritty, moving

About the Author

Author Simon Bourke

Simon is a journalist by day and an author by night (and occasionally on the weekends). If given the choice he would be an author by day, night, weekends, and everything in between, but he must persevere with the journalism while he waits for his books to become best-sellers. He currently lives in County Wexford. A Place Without Pain is his second novel.

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