Niall Williams

Setting aside my extreme appreciation of most things Irish: literature, language, music, landscape, culture, please believe me that you do not want to miss Niall Williams's This is Happiness. Niall Williams's This is Happiness offers irresistible story-telling.

It is 1958, electricity is coming to ever-rainy Faha in County Clare, in the west of Ireland. Noe Crowe is rusticating at his grandparents’ house having found his vocation for the priesthood faltering. Just before the electric men show more arrive, the rain stops and along comes Christy, to stay as a lodger as the Crowes senior have the rare telephone. He is one of the men involved in electrification but Noe immediately intuits that Christy is not only different but here on a mission. Gradually Christy's secret and his purpose emerge and intertwine with Noe's own efforts to figure himself out at least enough to know what direction to move in with his life. The novel is so rewarding I've said enough. Read it.

A sub-theme in the novel is music: As Noe begins to play the fiddle, Christy and Noe bicycle around the region in the hopes of happening upon Junior Crehan playing at a session or dance. If you do read the novel, be sure to go to your browser and look up Junior Crehan, one of County Clare's most wonderful composers and fiddlers of the last century and be sure also to go listen on youtube or wherever to a bit of his music, and listen to him talk about his life. Look up too, the Irish words that pop up here and there in the text.

At one moment, the narrator, Noe (pronounced No, 'short' for Noel--one of countless sly language moments as the Irish language itself contains no word for 'No' -- or 'Yes' for that matter) watches his grandfather standing quietly for hours in his upper field on the small family farm in the village of Faha in Clare, just . . . doing what looks like nothing, just looking about. Subtly but forcefully Williams quietly demonstrates as well what having electricity, that mysterious and now essential enabler of how we live now, will change everything: what will be gained and what will be lost.

The novel is so rich in detail, in humor, so emotionally engaging, so rewarding I've said enough. Read it. *****

Also don't miss History of the Rain which was a best book for me a few years back. show less

Set in Faha, Ireland in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1962, the story begins when an infant is found abandoned. Doctor Troy and his daughter Ronnie, take the child in, and try to keep it a secret from the town.

What a wonderful novel of love and family and understanding and forgiveness. Williams populates Faha with a variety of characters from an elderly priest who is clearly descending into dementia, to the young boy who finds the child, and the various people that make up a community show more – tradesmen, farmers, shopkeepers, the ladies of the church, school children, and the new young priest who is finding his way. In this very Catholic community, there are expectations and rules of conduct. The doctor is a trusted person who has never steered them wrong before, so his and Ronnie’s behavior and secrecy of late is concerning to all.

I had not read anything by Williams before, but this will NOT be the last book by him that I read. He’s a marvelous storyteller, and he writes with vivid descriptions and intelligent character development.

I particularly loved this scene of the Christmas Eve service:
The main pews were filling by procession, families coming in at the pace at which people look at each other when they’re in their best clothes. Hats that only came out for Christmas, the red felt one, the blue one with nominal ostrich feather, the green with seven plastic cherries, and the brimless pillbox or what passed for that in Faha, sat atop women’s heads in milliner’s homage to the saviour of the world, the half-can of hairspray securing the foundations. Those scrubbed children who, by age or convenience, had the dispensation to stay up, moved up the aisle with a nun’s reverence and mimicked the manners of adults in the theatre of a midnight birth.” show less

The Swain family is plagued with the Impossible Standard. Ruth Swain is ill and bedridden on the family farm in Clare amid the thousands of books her father collected. Her grandfather Swain, an Englishman, emigrated to Ireland when he was given a property by a family in Meath for a heroic act in World War I which he turns into a fine estate big house to show his father he can reach the Impossible Standard, but his father refuses even to visit. (Ireland not being a venue where the Impossible show more Standard can be met.) And so the grandfather begins to fish and writes a book on the salmon of Ireland as the estate molders into ruin. Ruth's father is brought up in genteel decay, reading and fishing with his father, then goes off to sea, returns and lands in Clare where he meets and falls in love with Ruth's mother. They have twins after many childless years, but one twin, the boy, eventually is lost. The father writes poetry and does his best to farm. (I'm not really spoiling, it is clear from early on that something Terrible happened). In the book Ruth never gets out of bed but is writing the story of the family. She refers frequently to the books in her father's library, likes to use capitals to highlight Important Matters. The story skates the thin line between humor and tragedy and never falters -- and with so many loving descriptions, dialogue and humorous (or sad) anecdotes about the people of the village of Faha. Delicious prose throughout.

As one who loves and plays Irish music, I've thought often about what makes Irish culture so unique because it IS unique, somehow embracing both the individual and the community, each needing the other to exist. At any Irish music gathering one can go from breathtaking complexity to heart-rending simplicity to uproarious laughter in seconds. There is never any relinquishing of what matters most: the wonder of being alive. Irish poetry, music, song, dance and literature all celebrate this fact, often, and paradoxically by honoring and remembering those who have died. Certainly [History of the Rain] fits this model. I cannot do the book justice, so I'll stop right here. ***** show less

Because here is what I know: the rain becomes the river that goes to the sea and becomes the rain that becomes the river. Each book is the sum of all the others the writer has read.

Ruth Swain is a bookish young woman who lives in the tiny attic of her parents' house in Faha, County Clare, Ireland. She is disabled by a serious chronic illness, so she is largely confined to her bed, surrounded by a large collection of books from her father's library, and her visitors are limited to her show more teacher, a young man who is smitten with her, and the remaining members of her family.

Ruth narrates her father's story, in an effort to understand and appreciate him, and in order to do so she must go back in time to learn more about the Swains, how their beliefs, eccentricities and personal tragedies have shaped the lives of her great-grandfather, grandfather and father, and in doing so how it has molded her own outlook on life.

The novel is filled with numerous literary references and allegories, and is written in a 19th century style in keeping with Ruth's primary influences, most notably Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson. She paints an ethereal portrait of County Clare and her family, particularly her father Abraham and her twin brother Aengus, with a lightly humorous touch that belies and alleviates the tragedy and heartache that afflicts the Swains, and her own self depreciating tendencies are in keeping with the Impossible Standard that prevents any of the Swains from achieving true happiness or personal satisfaction.

History of the Rain is an elegiac work about family, an appreciation of literature and poetry, and the way in which one's imagination can be used to influence the art of storytelling, which can be a useful tool to provide healing and closure in the face of personal tragedy. This book is certainly worthy of inclusion in this year's Booker Prize longlist, and I wouldn't be surprised if it made the shortlist as well. show less