Questa è la Felicità by Niall Williams

 Sublime, exceptional, superlative!

These ones are the first words with which I can describe Questa è la Felicità, This is Happiness by

Niall Williams. Published by Neri Pozza, Williams is intense, thanks to his intellectual, detailed descriptions of the existence and human conditions: a kiss, a place, a person are analyzed with sentiments, wisdom, acumen. When I find writers like Williams I would want to understand what they have read for then becoming the brains that they are.

The story told in this book 

Faha has lived per centuries without electricity; being a little place, its people are unique pieces, incastonated in that magical world that is Ireland. Strongly catholic people, the narrator and voice of this book will be the, now, 80 years old man Noel Crowe, at that time a teenager of 17 years. He  will share with us the adventures experienced during, maybe, the most important change for Faha: the arrival  of electricity, a new solitude of modern age after all, because if life was simplified, it also meant a drastic changes of habits for all the citizens.

Noel lived with his grand parents Ganga and Doedy because of the departure of his parents, and her mother in particular; a sad story. He is, after all, a happy boy; the arrival of Christy, a man of 60 years working for the electric company, who had asked for a room at Ganga and Doedy,  will mean to Noel new adventures. 

Noel will become an adult thanks to Christy, and will understand the power of love because of the old secret of his friend, a woman left behind fifty years ago! and pretty known in Faha. Christy admits to Noel that he is there not just for presenting electricity to Faha, but also for searching for people he can help or should say: "I am so sorry". To him, trying to be forgiven by people who meant a lot to him but that then have been betrayed by him, in a way or in another, is fundamental.

Noel is still shy, he can't understand the profoundity of feelings lived by Christy: after all there is an abyss of age difference between the two, but he understands that what Christy wants to do is a good thing; so he helps him, trying to reconnect him with the girl, Annie, that Christy had decided to leave alone.

Noel will become a good connection for Annie.

At the same time because of an incident at work, Noel will meet the daughters of his doctor, falling in love for all of them.

When Christy will leave, Noel will feel a strong melancholy but will have also the certainty that that mature friend taught him important life-lessons.

One of the most important questions of this book is: how strong can be feelings when a lot of time passes by?

Noel remembers vividly the daughter of the doctor, Sophie, still sensorially, but also his friend Christy, who had spent most of his existence in foreign countries couldn't forget her Annie and what happened between them.

The title of the book, This is Happiness, Questa è la Felicità is part of a conversation between Christy and Noel. 

Another thematic treated in the book is the lack of water. You must know that in Ireland rains everyday and it is weird that a single day is populated just by sun. Imagine when many many days are rain-free. We will assist at a change of habits of the citizens of Faha, constricted to watering their veggies and potatoes, strained because of this unexpected change.

This book won't be a quick reading. Personally I spent more than fifteen days for reading it or more: I had other books that I was reading because of reviews, but, it's not this. .. it must be a calm and absorbing reading for reflecting: you must absorb concepts, thoughts, feelings. It's not a book, thus one, that will leave you, once you will have completed it. Faha, Noel, Christy, Ganga, with his strong ideas, Doedy  will remain, because characterized very well and because the book has been written superbly,

giving to life the density and, more importantly, the lightness that deserves. 

The author writes, and I agree: "We are our stories. We tell them  to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling."

I chose this book because only in 1973 electricity was brought in our rural area: our people lived in an enchanted world at long; I remember that when we were electricity-free with mom and dad we lighted white candles and they started to tell the adventures lived by ancestors in a remote past, forgotten when artificial light too strong. 

Highly recommended!

I thank Neri Pozza for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori