Tag: Reading Challenges

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 – Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway

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About the Book

Book cover of Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway

It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus.

With the wreckage of the West’s spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only on a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumour in Whitehall – unconfirmed and a little scandalous – that George Smiley might almost be happy.

But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigrée and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead.

But in his absence the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley will soon find himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come, and strike at the heart of his greatest enemy…

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 24th October 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller

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My Review

As Nick Harkaway explains in his Author’s Note, there were always supposed to be more George Smiley books but by then the ‘external Smiley’ – particularly as embodied by Sir Alec Guinness in the 1979 TV adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – had supplanted his father’s own image of Smiley in his head. Karla’s Choice is Harkaway’s attempt to give us that more Smiley, taking advantage of the ten year gap in Smiley’s fictional life between the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. (In fact, there was another novel between The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – The Looking-Glass War – although Smiley plays a less substantial role in it.)

It’s probably not essential to have read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold but it would certainly help (plus it’s a great book) because the events of that novel, which culminates in the death of British agent Alec Leamas, loom large over Karla’s Choice. They definitely loom large in George Smiley’s mind being the person who was sent in to ‘clear up’ after Leamas’ death. Movingly, Smiley recalls the task of choosing the clothes in which Leamas would be buried. I felt one of the strengths of the book was the way it explored the moral dilemmas faced by those working in intelligence. ‘They were spies. Deception and betrayal were their legitimate tactics.’ Also the burden of living with the consequences of your actions, actions which may prove fatal for others.

Officially Smiley has retired from the Circus and is attempting to repair his marriage to Ann. The author gives us a tender portrait of their relationship. Although very different in character, their mutual affection is believable. However, he is lured back by that wily figure, Control, head of the Circus, to investigate the sudden disappearance of publisher, Laszlo Banati, shortly before the arrival of a Russian agent sent to kill him. With the assistance of Banati’s assistant Susanna, a Hungarian émigrée, Smiley attempts to discover more about the man who called himself Banati, why he disappeared and why someone should want to kill him.

What follows is an intricately plotted manhunt that takes us across Europe. What gradually emerges is the story of a boy whose identity now, decades later, must remain a closely guarded secret. It reunites Smiley with an individual he met long ago who has now reached the pinnacle of power within the Russian security service – Karla. It takes quite a long time for Karla to appear on the scene given the book’s title but then this is only the beginning of the duel between Smiley and Karla that plays out in later books including Smiley’s People.

The author skilfully evokes the atmosphere of the Circus, with its rather public school like quality and specialist departments who jealously guard the nature of their activities and are often presided over by idiosyncratic individuals such as the redoubtable Connie Sachs with her remarkable memory and facility for marshalling information. If you’re familiar with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy I think you’ll agree the author gets it spot on when it comes to the depiction of characters such as Toby Esterhase, keen to adopt the persona of an Englishman but unable to hide his Hungarian roots, or Bill Haydon, all lascivious charm and miffed if he’s not at the centre of what’s going on. (Personally, I can never see the names of the characters without picturing the actors who played them in the 1979 TV adaptation.)

Nick Harkaway admits there will be people who love Karla’s Choice because, as he says, ‘their attachment to George Smiley and the Circus is so deep that any slight touch of his hand is enough to bring them joy’. On the other hand, he knows there may be others whose hackles rise at his ‘absurd hubris’. I’m definitely in the first category. I thought the book was a brilliant addition to the George Smiley oeuvre and I was completely drawn into the world the author has created. I think his father would be proud.

My thanks to Christian at Christian Lewis PR for my proof copy.

In three words: Intricate, suspenseful, immersive

About the Author

Author Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway is the acclaimed author of books including Gnomon, The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker, Tigerman and Titanium Noir, and writing under the name of Aidan Truhen, of the Jack Price novels, beginning with The Price You Pay. He is the son of John le Carré and has an unique insight into his father’s work. He lives in London with his wife and two children. (Photo: Amazon author page)

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