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

A mesmerising new novel from the author of the bestselling Four Letters of Love

John

This story takes up where O Come Ye Back to Ireland left off. After learning they can't have children, Niall and Christine adopt their only child, Diedre, and continue their story in the pastoral farming community in the wild and beautiful Irish countryside.

When Summer's in the Meadow

O Now!

"The writing in this book is lyrical . . . a beautiful book that you will love.” -Good Morning America's #1 Favorite Book of the Year "I am utterly obsessed with Niall Williams." -Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake "Made me laugh out loud and remember how to love.” -Margaret Renkl, The New York Times From the author of This Is Happiness, a compassionate, life-affirming novel about the Christmas season that transforms the small Irish town of Faha. Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever. Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams' beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.

Winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award

'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.

Niall Williams

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