This Happy
This Happy is the debut novel by Niamh Campbell, a writer living and working in Dublin. She has essays and short stories published in The Dublin Review, 3:AM, Banshee, gorse, Five Dials, and Tangerine. She was the winner of the 2020 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. When writing about a book I think it is helpful to include the blurb as this is what folks might first read if they picked up this book in a bookshop. On the back cover, we are told of This Happy:
When Alannah was twenty-three, she met a man who was older than her - a married man - and fell in love. Things happened suddenly, She was young then and always so wound up. They met in April, in the first bit of mild weather; and in August, they went to stay in rural Ireland. It did not end well.
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 realization that she has been waiting - all this time - to be rediscovered.
This Happy is a portrait of a young woman analyzing a past relationship with a married man when she was in her 20s within the context of her brand new marriage at age 30. The story is told through Alannah’s memories of her three weeks spent at a cottage in Ireland with Harry, a 40-year-old married man, and her present experience adjusting to a new and impulsive marriage with another 40-year-old man. We begin the story six years after the end of the affair, but Alannah tells us she remembers it “forensically.”
The writing is lyrical while still being accessible. I loved the flawed character of Alannah and the way she is cast realistically as a hero and victim and clown throughout the book. I read that Campbell began this book as a series of monologues and I think that shows throughout as there is minimal plot. Any book written by a young Irish woman automatically gets a comparison to Sally Rooney, and This Happy shares some of the same millennial awareness and sharp narration that Rooney’s books are known for, but I think This Happy stands apart in its close and philosophical analyses of modern relationships.
This book addresses memory and how time can change the way we feel about past events and relationships. Alannah’s understanding of her relationship with Harry has changed over time. Thinking back, Alannah says of the relationship, “It seemed sad, the saddest possible thing.” Understanding the power imbalance between her and Harry has been an ongoing project. She was willing to change herself and abandon her life to be with him and seemed to be blind to his inability to commit to her in the same way. The understanding that he wouldn’t be leaving his wife came too late. There were red flags in the relationship from the beginning, and Alannah knew that Harry had other affairs in the past. Still, she gave her whole self to the relationship and the fallout changed the way she understood herself and her place in the world.
Her relationships with Harry and her husband are compared throughout. Campbell explores the roles of need. Harry didn’t need Alannah, and while her new husband does, it’s not in the way that Alannah might hope. Both of the relationships are grounded in impulse — in the case of her relationship with Harry’s, it’s the impulse to be saved, and in the case of her marriage to her husband, it’s the impulse to be the one doing the saving. Alannah tells us, “to be quite simply a normal person […] to exist as something other than a burning wisp of futile rage; to belong, to be loved, never ever abandoned again.” I think this is a beautiful way to express such a painful but universal desire.
I have had my fair share of questionable relationships. I have put aside my awareness of unfair power balances in the hope of being important to someone. I remember telling a friend that I would do anything to be someone’s most important person, the person who is at the center of someone’s decision-making. I wanted to be the axis someone would rotate around. I think most of us have felt this desire when young and hoping for love. Alannah holds this hope with Harry and also with her new husband. She is challenged by the understanding that they can’t put her in this position and that no one can or will. This book explores the impact of memory and how time can give us the space to understand how the painful parts of our past inform our choices in the present.
For more information on This Happy:
https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/niamh-campbell-this-happy