SHORTLISTED FOR THE BEST NOVEL IN THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE
By the author of Four Letters of Love, the international bestseller now a major film starring Helena Bonham Carter and Pierce Brosnan

‘I love this book so passionately' Ann Patchett
‘Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive’ Sunday Times

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 – 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, Christy’s buried past gradually comes to light, casting a glow on a small world and making it new.

‘If you’re craving a novel of delicate wit laced with rare insight, this, truly, is happiness’ Washington Post
‘Written with a turn of phrase that makes the reader want to underline something on every page’
Financial Times
‘What makes this so compelling and enjoyable is Williams’s transparent love of his characters and delight in his setting’ Observer

Admirers of Niall Williams’s Booker-longlisted History of the Rain will not be disappointed to learn that his latest novel is possibly even better … What makes this so compelling and enjoyable is Williams’s transparent love of his characters and delight in his setting -- Alexander Larman * Observer *
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. I suggest we all buy his books, pushing him into that realm of globally fashionable Irish writers, but more importantly, sharing with a vast audience his humane and poetic world view -- Isabel Berwick * Financial Times *
Williams has the eye of a poet and the raconteur’s knack for finding a tale in the most unpromising nook of everyday life, as a now-adult Noel, summoning the Faha of his nostalgic imagination, narrates an elegiac novel that’s careful always to offset the antic rural eccentricity with darker notes of loss * Daily Mail *
This is Happiness returns to the beguiling gloom of Faha … [A] wise and redemptive novel … It dares, in addition, to be wildly comic … With his silver ear for speech and extreme attentiveness to the Heaneyesque “music of everyday”, Mr Williams treads softly on the dreams of youth and memories of old age -- Caroline Jackson * Country Life *
Lovingly written, the text is brimming with humanity, truth and humour – and then there’s the pitch perfect language, with not a word out of place … Magnificent -- Sue Leonard * Irish Examiner *
Sharp as a tack, bright as a button, and engorged with rich humour, this is a love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone * Irish Independent *
A surge of language, beautiful and enchanting, a novel that weaves a love of literature into its own moving tale -- Praise for 'History of the Rain' * Guardian *
Extremely moving, poignantly capturing Ruth’s doomed childhood relationship with her twin brother. By the final chapter I was weeping -- Praise for 'History of the Rain' * Sunday Times *
Deeply allusive, infectiously hopeful … Somewhere between bildungsroman, epic and family saga, History of the Rain is an unashamedly unfashionable, lyrical paean to the pleasure of reading and to serendipity -- Praise for 'History of the Rain' * Daily Telegraph *
A delicate and graceful love story that is also an exaltation of love itself . . . A luminously written, magical work of fiction -- Praise for 'Four Letters of Love' * New York Times Book Review *
A book that I am rereading in an attempt to figure out the magic and calm my soul -- Kate DiCamillo * New York Times Book Review *

Niall Williams was born in Dublin in 1958. His critically acclaimed and bestselling fiction has been shortlisted for the Irish Times Literature Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the IMPAC Award. Williams’ debut novel Four Letters of Love, an international bestseller, has been adapted by the author for screen and will star Helena Bonham-Carter, Pierce Brosnan and Gabriel Byrne. His most recent novel Time of the Child was an instant Irish Times bestseller and was awarded the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award. He lives in Kiltumper in County Clare, with his wife, Christine.
niallwilliams.com