Rating: 
Summary: I'll read it again
Review: The language was beautiful, some very simple expressions of love, but so real, and some very surprising images that gave love another dimension. I need to read it again, leisurely. I was anxious about how it would end the first time through. Now I can read it again slowly, and enjoy the imagery.
Rating:
Summary: Consumed by Love
Review: The power of this book lies in the author' ability to let us share the feelings of love the main characters have for each other. Stephen's father is a wonderful character. He sizes men up by the fit of the pants and can read his son's soul through his chess game. The writing pulls the reader into the feelings of the characters not just the story line.
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Summary: Even better than Four Letters of Love
Review: The simplest of subjects - love - written with an unbelievable ease and understanding. A must-read-in-the-one-sitting experience. Worth waiting the four years since Andrews' previous offering. Only wish this author was even more prolific.
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Summary: Why is Nobody Talking About This Book?
Review: There should be a big buzz over this book and this author - Where is Oprah when you really need her? Williams' writing is absolutely breathtaking. It was so good that I literally had to take "rests" between chapters to savor what I had read. This is a wonderful follow-up to The Four Letters of Love which I also highly recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure pleasure to read
Review: This is an excellent, light summer read. The romance is intriguing and moving, the words used to tell the story are delicious and vivid, and the characters are skillfully developed. I am anxious to pass my copy of this book onto friends now that I am finished. This book is a good reminder that Heaven is here all around us, if we only stop to notice and savour it. But don't let that comment scare you away. This book is never preachy or syrupy.I fully expect this to become one of Oprah's Books of the Month. It is only a matter of time. I look forward to reading other books by this author in the future. It isn't every author that can capture the essence of life and love, and paint it as true and clear as well as Niall Williams can.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good, but ...
Review: This was a good book, the story & writing were beautiful. But still, could not compare to "Four Letters Of Love." My expectations were high, and although I enjoyed it ... a lot ... it wasn't all that I expected.
Rating:
Summary: For Those Who Love Poetic Language and a Great Story
Review: When I read this book last summer, I was captivated from the first sentence by the way Niall Williams writes in poetry and still holds the reader in the grip of a wonderful story. I loved the thought of Stephen falling in love with a woman he has never met as she plays her violin on a cold stormy night...and the temperature inside that Irish concert hall turns tropical. The seamlessness between life and death, reality and imagination, sorrow and joy bring the reader into realms not touched by many authors. Williams' metaphors and truth are unequaled by contemporary writers. The optimism he brings within the pages of this book is a breath of spring.
I recommended this to my book discussion group last fall. It was a lively discussion between those who take a hard, cold, look at reality in the world and those who accept spirits and magic as a part of life. No matter what the view, however, everyone there marveled at the way this author uses words to cast his spell.
Rating:
Summary: Part 1, ch.15: "Life is not simple, nor love inevitable."
Review: While browsing in a bookstore, this book caught my eye. I hadn't heard of Niall Williams before that moment. I sat down with the book and was immediately captivated by the somber seriousness of the story and the lyrical beauty of the author's style. And I left with the book, in more ways than one. If predominant weather conditions are an indication of a story's tone, then this is definitely one of fog, mist, blustery wind and slanting rain rather than clear visibility, blue skies, sun, and gentle breezes. The three protagonists (Philip, Stephen, and Gabriella) all struggle with the emptiness of loss in their own ways; they all show us the depths of what it is to mourn, grieve, and battle resentment. But the graceful beauty of the story is that in the ever-burgeoning relationship of Stephen and Gabriella we learn that true love not only displaces the emptiness... it HEALS it. It is something learned only in retrospect, neither is aware of what is happening to them at the time. At their mature age, they are like a densely populated city: nothing new can be built, in its heart, without something else being torn down. But Williams lets love do its work, and, as we read in Part 2, ch.3: "When something of great size moves into the heart it dislodges all else..." Virtually all of the peripheral characters in this story possess an intuitiveness that is lacking in Stephen and Gabriella. (Read it with this in mind and see see if you don't agree). It's as though everyone else knows more about them than they themselves do... it's a clever device employed by Williams, and it puts the MYSTERY in the MIST that these two are always walking through. It effectively gives the impression that the world is truly revolving around them... as though the ferryman's only purpose for existence is to shuttle them across the Shannon. I enjoyed all this romanticism. For staunch realists, this will not do; for hopeless romantics, they will see it as a canonization of their every longing. Admittedly, I was somewhere in the middle. Ireland's windswept coastline and verdant interior form the perfect backdrop for all that Williams wants to say. Nature is everywhere significant. Two scenes are especially memorable for me: Stephen's solitary walk on the beach at Spanish Point where he shouts out into the wind for only the gulls and the sea to hear... "I'm in love with that woman." The other scene, equally bursting with the cooperation of nature, is earlier on, when the deer discovers Gabriella in the forest. Williams points to these instances as the beginning of a healing process in each person, the difference being primarily that Gabriella's "moment" is more individually motivated... she has not even met Stephen yet! This is significant, and is consistent with the progression of the story... true DEVOTION to the OTHER comes much easier (and sooner) for Stephen than for Gabriella. This book wonderfully reminds us that what is most loved is most precious. It lifts the veil, if for a moment, on the sheer mystery... the vulnerability of love, and the seeming indifference with which tragedy is capable of striking that which is most precious.
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