This is Happiness (Williams) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Williams has painted a lush, wandering portrait of Faha, a village back in time in County Clare, Ireland.…"Oh, just shut up and take me back to Faha," I wanted to interject at times. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t; he’s too sweet a fellow…. Be kind, he admonishes the reader directly at one point, and it’s a testament to this bighearted novel that I felt duly chastened, almost like a member of the clan.
Elizabeth Graver - New York Times Book Review


The Ireland that Niall Williams writes about in this novel is gone — or would be if he hadn’t cradled it so tenderly in the clover of his prose. Escaping into the pages of This Is Happiness feels as much like time travel as enlightenment.… Williams’s most affecting skill is his ability to narrate this novel in two registers simultaneously, capturing Noe’s naivete as a teen and his wisdom as an old man.… If you’re a reader of a certain frame of mind, craving a novel of delicate wit laced with rare insight, this, truly, is happiness.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


In the pre-modern idyll fashioned by Mr. Williams, beauty stands out a little more sharply, and feelings are experienced with more directness and intensity.… A meandering, often delightful, rural rhapsody, This Is Happiness recalls only what was sublime about the simple life in Faha.… There is no small amount of blarney in this. I laughed out loud at Noel’s astonishing claim that "there was little culture of complaint" during that era, as though glorious grumblers like Sean O’Casey and Patrick Kavanagh had never put pen to paper.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


Williams balances carefully between nostalgia and clear-eyed realism.… [V]ivid character sketches abound ... Jumbling chronology and interjecting retrospective opinions as everyone does when remembering the past, Noe warmly evokes a village immersed in the timeless rhythms of nature and the rituals of the Catholic Church, counterpointed by blunt depictions of the bone-deep fatalism of people who know that outsiders view them as backward.… Noe’s musings may occasionally dip into sentimentality, but it’s honest sentiment honestly acquired from his embrace of the full spectrum of human experience — a lesson he learned during the transformative months eloquently captured in Niall Williams’s tender, touching novel.
Wendy Smith - Boston Globe


This is a charming, often moving book, enriched by beautifully drawn characters and brilliantly depicted scenes from country life. The narrative unfurls at a languid pace: We drift from Easter services to games of Gaelic football, from pub sessions to house dances. And yet we happily surrender to the gentle rhythms of the drama and the lilting cadences of the prose. Again and again Williams ensures there is musicality in standard descriptions and poetry gilding commonplace truths.… Williams has written a memorable novel that vividly brings alive both a different era and two different male characters—"knights of first and last loves."
Malcolm Forbes - Minneapolis Star Tribune


Charming is one word for Williams’ prose. It is also life-affirming and written with a turn of phrase that makes the reader want to underline something on every page.… This is not a book to read for fast-moving developments. It is one to savour, slowly, like the way of life it enshrines. The supporting cast is huge, eccentric, frequently funny.
Isabel Berwick - Financial Times (UK)


[G]lorious and lyrical prose ... Noe’s reminiscences of that period are full of beauty and hard-won wisdom. This novel is a delight.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) The beauty and power of Irish author Niall Williams' writing lies in his ability to invest the quotidian with wonder. A truly peerless wordsmith, he even makes descriptions of gleaming white appliances and telephone wire sing…the book is hilarious among its many other virtues. Buy, rent, get your hands on this book somehow and savor every word of it. Its title says it all: Plunging into This is Happiness is happiness indeed.
BookPage


(Starred review) With a beckoning gentleness that belies the deeper philosophies at play, superb Irish author Williams offers a lilting, magical homage to time and redemption, and a stirring, sentimental journey into the mysteries of love and the possibilities of friendship.
Booklist


(Starred review) Warm and whimsical, sometimes sorrowful, but always expressed in curlicues of Irish lyricism, this charming book makes varied use of its electrical metaphor, not least to express the flickering pulse of humanity. A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.
Kirkus Reviews