Niall Williams

From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Four Letters of Love, a sparkling, perfectly formed new novel

History of the Rain

A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing.You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed.The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries.Niall Williams's latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.

This Is Happiness

Christine Breen

'In Kiltumper' is a memoir of life in rural Ireland and a meditation on the power, beauty, and importance of the natural world.

A Year in an Irish Garden

In Kiltumper

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST and REAL SIMPLE A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing. You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed. The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries. Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.

Four Letters of Love

Time of the Child

As it is in heaven

Set in the west of Ireland and Venice, and featuring a shy and unselfconfident schoolteacher Stephen Griffin, his love-lorn and depressed father whose only desire is to die and join his wife and daughter in heaven, and Gabriella Castoldi, a spellbinding musician.

As it is in Heaven

Stephen is just a boy when his mother and sister are killed in a car crash, and his father never recovers from the accident: he wasn't involved but is subsequently consumed by grief. His faith in God, fate and the future devastated, Philip is unable to rebuild his life, and his only remaining desire is to be reunited with his wife.

A Play

The Way You Look Tonight

A tale of destiny, acceptance, & the tragedies & miracles of everyday life.

Una celebración de los libros, el amor y el poder curativo de la imaginación. Una historia preciosista que cautiva desde el inicio al lector. ¿Tiene historia la lluvia? Pues sí, y bien mirado todos somos nuestras historias: las contamos para seguir vivos y recordar a los que ya no están. «Para empezar hay que ubicarte en el paisaje, localizar a los tuyos y tu lugar. Hasta que eso ocurre estás en la historia equivocada», comenta Ruth Swain. El paisaje es Irlanda, los suyos son parientes extravagantes, y su lugar son los libros. En un pueblecito a orillas del río Shannon, esta muchacha de diecinueve años vive confinada en el ático de la casa familiar. Los casi cuatro mil libros que heredó levantan barricadas alrededor de su cama, y la lluvia es la música constante que nunca deja de sonar. Desde ese refugio la voz irónica de Ruth emprende un viaje literario en busca de su padre, Virgil Swain, un granjero y poeta tardío que leíapasajes de William Blake a sus vacas y transmitió a la hija el amor por los libros: Dickens, Stevenson y Emily Dickinson orientan ahora a la joven cuando se propone desvelar el misterio de la familia. La historia de la lluvia es un viaje en el tiempo, pero también un homenaje a la lectura donde se combinan la imaginación y el sentido del humor. Heredero de una tradición que abarca a autoras de la talla de Flannery O'Connor, Williams es uno de los escritores clave de la narrativa anglosajona actual.

La historia de la lluvia

Niall and Christine left their careers in New York City for a simpler, more authentic life in a cottage outside the tiny village of Kilmihil in County Clare. "Their tale is a delightful romance."—The New York Times Book Review

Our First Year in County Clare

O Come Ye Back to Ireland

Francis Foley is a proud, stubborn man, and cannot stand to be beholden to anyone. Quick to anger and slow to forgiveness, it is his temper that, one day, costs his sons their home and their mother. This will not be the last of their losses. Set in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, this title traces the footsteps of the five Foley men.

The Fall of Light

'Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of nature' IRISH TIMESWhen they were in their twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave New York City and move to Christine's ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed the rhythms of the earth. In 2019, with Christine in the final stages of recovery from cancer and the surrounding land threatened by the arrival of turbines, Niall and Christine decided to document a year - in words and Christine's drawings - of living in their garden and in their small corner of a rapidly changing world. Proceeding month by month through the year, this is the story of a garden in all its many splendours, and a couple who have made their life observing its wonders.

A novel set in Ireland in the nineteenth century follows the adventures of the four Foley brothers, who were separated by the brutality of the Irish wilderness, the potato famine, and the promise of America, as they end up in different corners of the world.

The Unrequited opens with the arrival in Oslo of Raphael Newell, a Dublin accountant. Someone who has always previously lived on the margins of life, Ray has come to Norway to find the married woman he has fallen in love with. Invigorated by the experience of being in love, Ray sees the world differently; everything and everyone around him is transformed, and he feels for the first time that he has really come alive.

The Unrequited

In June, 2006, Picador launch Picador Shots, a new series of pocket-sized books priced at £1. The Shots aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some Picador's greatest authors. They will be contemporarily packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine. The Unrequited by Niall Williams is to be one of the first. 'The Unrequited' opens with the arrival in Oslo of Raphael Newell, a Dublin accountant. Someone who has always previously lived on the margins of life, Ray has come to Norway find the married woman he has fallen in love with. Rejuevnated and invigorated by the experience of being in love, Ray sees the world differently; everything and everyone around him is transformed, and he feels for the first time that he has really come alive. Recounting the couple's first meeting alongside Ray's Norwegian quest, The Unrequited is both love story and fable, both a story for our times and -- in the themes of love, life and loss it explores -- one that is timeless; a story for all ages, in all senses of the word.

PICADOR SHOTS - 'The Unrequited'

Boy in the World is a story of an adopted Irish boy's search for a father he's never known - Jay has been raised by the Master, a man who is simultaneously his devoted grandfather and senior-school tutor - One day, the Master gives Jay a letter written by his dead mother which reveals the identity of his father - What follows is Jay's rejection of Catholicism and his journey across Europe in search of his missing lineage and alternative faith-beliefs.

Niall Williams

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