"A wise, tender, life-affirming return to the beloved town of Faha by the award-winning master of Irish literature
This is the why of us.
October in the parish of Faha, County Clare – the beginning of the season of spirits.
Four nights a week, Bat Considine calls on his neighbour Mossie Crowe; a beloved widower known to all in the townland of Faha as Ganga. They sit by the fire and, as Bat reads the newspaper aloud, wait to see which of them will die first.
But this week, Bat will make a discovery that changes this routine forever. In the coming days, Ganga’s small community will gather, and his family travel home from far away; to celebrate a quiet life, in all its miracles.
Funny, beautiful, transcendent and wise, O Now! leads readers back down the road that leads to Faha – and explores what it means to live a meaningful life, and what it means to leave it behind.
Praise for Niall Williams
‘I am utterly obsessed with Niall Williams’ Ann Patchett
‘Makes the reader want to underline something on every page’ Financial Times
‘Infectiously hopeful’ Daily Telegraph C 2026 Niall Williams P 2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"
"Bloomsbury presents Time of the Child by Niall Williams, read by Dermot Crowley.
'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. C 2024 Niall Williams P 2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"
"Bloomsbury presents In Kiltumper by Niall Williams and Christine Breen, read by Niall Williams and Christine Breen.
Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of nature' IRISH TIMES
When 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. C 2021 Niall Williams C 2021 Christine Breen P 2021 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"
"Change is coming to Faha, a small Irish parish unaltered 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."
"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 however: as the four boys and their father embark on an odyssey to find untenanted land they can call their own, their already diminished family is divided still further. But if a combination of choice and chance cause the five to separate and scatter, each to their own road, then a series of casual encounters and coincidences offer some hope for reunion and -- in Francis's case -- redemption.
Set in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, The Fall of Light traces the footsteps of the five Foley men. With elegant, elegiac prose, Niall Williams guides his characters -- and his readers -- through hazard and hardship, friendship, love and death, through to Europe, America and Africa . . . and home again."
"We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. In Faha, County Clare, everyone is a long story...
Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to her father, Virgil - via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room."
"Jim Foley loves his parents, his brother, his sister, Dickens and God; later, he loves Kate -- enough to make her his wife and to shape his life around her -- and later still, he loves his children, Jack and Hannah.
Only Say the Word tells Jim's story, and the story of the people and places in his life, as he moves from childhood to marriage and fatherhood, from early days spent in County Clare to early adulthood in America, and back to Clare once more. Deeply personal and written in his lyrical, lilting prose, Niall Williams's fourth novel is about unspoken emotions, undying devotion and blind faith -- but, ultimately, about the redeeming, enduring nature of love."
"When I was twelve years old God spoke to my father for the first time. God didn't say much. He told my father to be a painter and left it at that . . . ' So begins Niall Williams' magical tale about love and destiny.
Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore were made for each other -- but fate doesn't always take the easiest or the most obvious route to true love. For a start, Nicholas and Isabel have never met and nor are they likely to, without some kind of divine intervention. But as God, ghosts, a series of coincidences and seemingly chance events and encounters conspire to bring the couple together, other -- often more human -- forces attempt to keep them apart. 'What will be, will be,' of course, but that doesn't guarantee a happy-ever-after ending, nor answer the question 'Will they, won't they?'
Written in a lyrical, lilting tone, Four Letters of Love is a glorious, uplifting story about faith, about seizing the moment, believing in your instincts and acting on impulse -- and about following your heart, no matter where it may lead."
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