Book Review - This is Happiness by Niall Williams скачать в хорошем качестве

Book Review - This is Happiness by Niall Williams

‘This is Happiness’ is the most Irish Irish book you’ll ever read. Not a loud, drunk and Dublinesque, but a west coast, lilting, slow, poetic and very funny Ireland. It’s the story of a village called Faha, left behind even in the left-behind Ireland of the late ’50s. Faha is the home of the grandparents of our storyteller Noel (’No’), son of one of their 12 children, who returns, a lost soul, to stay with them for the only summer in living memory without rain. In fact, the first chapter has just one sentence, “It had stopped raining”. His stay coincides with the coming to the village of ‘the electricity’, which brings with it the much older Christie to lodge with  No’s grandparents (Ganga and Dodie). Christie becomes his mentor in what is a coming of age story for both No and the inhabitants of Faha. It’s laugh-out-loud funny and sad in equal measure, and the language is so beautiful that I relistened to whole chapters to absorb its poetry. If you’re happy to use ‘the electricity’ (refused by many in Faha, who prefer the printed page equivalent of peat fire and candle), do  get the audio book, which has the most beautiful narration by Dermot Crowley. Oh, now.