This Happy - Paperback

by Niamh Campbell (Author)

'A beautiful, wry love story' David Nicholls, author of ONE DAY

'I love this woman's writing. Golden sentences' Diana Evans, author of ORDINARY PEOPLE

'One of the year's most beautifully written books, THIS HAPPY traces the path to womanhood of Alannah from disastrous affair to no-less-comfortable marriage and beyond' The i, Best Books of 2020 So Far

'If you loved Sally Rooney's NORMAL PEOPLE, read thisnovel ... Darklyromantic... Reminiscent ofEimear McBride's lyrical Joycean sentences' Vogue

'The best novel I have read all year' Sunday Business Post

I have taken apart every panel of this, like an ornamental fan. But we stayed in the cottage for three weeks only, just three weeks, because it was cut short you see - cut short after just three weeks, when I'd left my entire life behind.

When Alannah was twenty-three, she met a man who was older than her - a married man - and fell in love. Things happened suddenly. They met in April, in the first bit of mild weather; and in August, they went to stay in rural Ireland, overseen by the cottage's landlady.

Six years later, when Alannah is newly married to another man, she sees the landlady from afar. Memories of those days spent in bliss, then torture, return to her. And the realisation that she has been waiting - all this time - to be rediscovered.

Author Biography

Niamh Campbell holds a PhD in English literature from King's College London and works as a postdoctoral fellow for the Irish Research Council at Maynooth University. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Dublin Review, 3: AM Magazine, The Penny Dreadful, Banshee, gorse, and the collection Autonomy (New Binary Press, 2018), published in aid of the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment in Ireland. She was awarded a 'Next Generation' literary bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland in 2016, and an annual literary bursary in 2018. She is based in Dublin