num_pages: 400
description: About This Is HappinessThe most enchanting novel you'll read this year from the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the RainChange is coming to Faha a small Irish parish that hasn't changed in a thousand years.For one thing the rain is stopping. Nobody remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard is a condition of living. But now  just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of the electricity  the rain clouds are lifting. 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. Harking back to a simpler time This Is Happiness is a tender portrait of a community  its idiosyncrasies and traditions its paradoxes and kindnesses its failures and triumphs  and a coming-of-age tale like no other. Luminous and lyrical yet anchored by roots running deep into the earthy and everyday it is about the power of stories: their invisible currents that run through all we do writing and rewriting us and the transforming light that they throw onto our world.
language: English
title: This Is Happiness
publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing