Tag: HF Reading Challenge

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 – Revenge of Rome by Simon Scarrow @headlinepg @SimonScarrow

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Revenge of Rome by Simon Scarrow which will be published on 7th November 2024. My thanks to Alara at Headline for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

About the Book

Book cover of Revenge of Rome by Simon Scarrow

AD 61. Britannia is divided. The rebel horde has been defeated. But the leader, Boudica, and her remaining warriors are still at large. With them is the eagle standard of the Ninth Legion, taken in ambush, flaunted as proof that Rome can yet be beaten. The embers of rebellion are still glowing…

The toll has been heavy, with countless men lost, and major towns in ruins. The bodies of the dead are strewn across the streets. And for Centurion Macro, there is the scarring knowledge that his mother perished in the attack on Londinium.

As Macro’s heart burns for revenge, he and his comrade-in-arms Prefect Cato are tasked with hunting down the remnants of the enemy army. There can be no peace until the queen is captured or killed. And Roman honour will only be restored when the eagle standard has been recovered.

Format: Hardcover (432 pages) Publisher: Headline
Publication date: 7th November 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Revenge of Rome is the twenty-third book in Simon Scarrow’s ‘Eagles of the Empire’ series and sees the return of friends and comrades, Prefect Cato and Centurion Macro. For added spice we also have the famous warrior queen, Boudica. Cato, Macro and Boudica, that’s a truly fiery combination. Plus, we get a first glimpse of the young Agricola who would go on to great things.

The history books may have Boudica dead after the defeat of the rebel army she led, the battle which formed the climax of the previous book Rebellion, but in Revenge of Rome she’s very much alive and ready to bring the fight to Rome once again. Her implacable anger against the Roman Empire is not only because of their brutal subjugation of the tribal people of Britannica but also because of the cruel treatment meted out to her and her daughters. Boudica is utterly ruthless, demanding complete loyalty from her followers and removing anyone who shows even the slowest signs of wavering.

But Boudica has learned a lot from the defeat, including about Roman military tactics, and sets about transforming what’s left of the rebel army into an even more formidable enemy, one that lurks in the shadows, attacking when least expected, carrying on a kind of guerilla warfare designed to gradually erode the strength of the Roman forces and damage their morale.

Despite the fact they are bitter enemies, Boudica has respect for the abilities of Cato and Macro. (As readers of previous books will know, there’s history between the three of them, Macro especially.) She describes Cato as a man whose intelligence is matched by his good fortune and Macro as the greatest of Rome’s warriors.

The Roman legions assigned to Britannica have their own difficulties. They lost many men in the battle against the rebel horde which, at some points, was on a knife edge. The replacements are raw recruits who need to be whipped into shape. This is where Macro comes in and there’s a brilliant scene in which he addresses a batch of them in his own inimitable way.

Cato faces other pressures. Commander of the Roman forces in Britannica, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, is demanding the complete destruction of the rebel force and the capture of Boudica so she can be led in chains through the streets of Rome before the Emperor Nero. It’s an almost possible task given the available manpower and the nature of the terrain. But as Cato observes, ‘As is often the case for such men, arrogance and ignorance trump wisdom on almost every occasion.’ Furthermore Suetonius is not a patient man since his own career – his life, even – depends on achieving a victory that will satisfy Nero.

However, Cato wonders about the wisdom of the approach, about what will happen should he succeed in punishing mercilessly the Icenians and their allies as Suetonius desires. As he reflects, ‘Often Rome stood for all that was best in the world. But sometimes she made grave errors, and was the very source of evil, forcing the best among her people to make great sacrifices in terms of blood and reputation to draw her back onto the right path, all the while being castigated by loud villains posturing as patriots‘.

It wouldn’t be a Simon Scarrow book without some great set piece action scenes, including the final assault on Boudica’s stronghold which requires all Cato’s strategic nous to overcome what seem like impenetrable obstacles. As always, Macro’s in the heat of the action. On the other side, Boudica seeks to rouse her followers for one last fight, even if it seems likely to end in defeat or death. Her rallying cry recalls the speech by Shakespeare’s Henry V on the eve of Agincourt. Describing them as ‘the lucky few’, she exhorts them to summon up their courage so that ‘all those who live after us on this island [may] recall and relive our deeds.’

There’s an elegaic sense about Revenge of Rome with both Cato and Macro pondering their futures. After all the death and destruction, the final chapters contain some moving moments. Although I very much hope it’s not the end of their adventures together, if it is, then Revenge of Rome ensures we’re going out on a high.

In three words: Gripping, authentic, dramatic
Try something similar: Invader (Agricola #1) by Simon Turney

About the Author

Author Simon Scarrow

Simon Scarrow’s Roman soldier heroes Cato and Macro first appeared in 2000 in Under The Eagle, and have subsequently fought their way through over twenty novels, including Rebellion, Death to the Emperor and Centurion.

Simon is the author of many other acclaimed novels, from the Criminal Inspector Schenke thrillers set in Berlin during the Second World War to a quartet of novels about Wellington and Napoleon; from Sword & Scimitar, an historical drama based on the 1565 Siege of Malta, to Hearts of Stone, a story of Greek Resistance fighters, again in the Second World War. He has also written with co-authors to create Pirata, Invader and Arena, set in the Roman era, and Playing with Death, a contemporary thriller.

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