Four Letters of Love

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Summary: WHAT IS LOVE?
Review: "What is Love?" the poet Shelley asked. He would have been well on his way to an answer had he read the achingly brilliant Four Letters Of Love by Irish muse and novelist Niall Williams. Written with heart rather than pen, Mr. Williams reveals love in all its marvelous manifestations, throbbing incarnations, and painful dissolutions - filial love, erotic love - no face of love is left unseen in this stunning fiction debut.

Set in unforgiving corners of Ireland, two stories are told simultaneously, until at last they meet in a soaring, exultant denouement. An only child, young Nicholas Coughlan believed that "our little family had been singled out. We were a sort of test unit for God." His father, William, had been called by God to leave his home and job to paint, while his mother saw the Lord as a constant presence.

Believing that God had a special plan for him, too, enabled Nicholas to endure the hardships of life without his father and the eventual death of a mother who loved by repapering walls in pastel shades and meticulously ironing shirts.. Desperate not to be left alone he followed his father to the Atlantic coast, where one day they took shelter from the rain under a great chestnut tree. At last, Nicholas found a moment of pure bliss as his father thanked him for coming.

"As simple as that," Nicholas thinks. "If we could have lain down there or burrowed like animals into the tree itself, screened from the world....There could have been peace."

There is no peace to be found in the parallel story. Isabel Gore lives on a remote island off the coast of Galway with her brother, Sean, her schoolmaster father, Muiris, and her mother, Margaret. As children Isabel and Sean had a favorite place to play, "a little sea gallery of stone steps, levels, platforms...Isabel danced on the high slab of rock to Sean's imaginary fiddle."

But one day as they play Sean is stricken, unable to speak or move, "...he was as stilled and useless as an instrument laid aside." Only 11 years of age, his sister blamed herself, "I caused this. I've hurt my brother.....On the island of quietness, Isabel began to feel a prisoner of what she had done."

Muiris, a disappointed poet, sees Isabel as the fulfillment of his ambitions when she is sent to convent school on the mainland. Instead, she meets Peader O'Luing, a young trader in wools and tweeds. Her studies suffer as their courtship flourishes, and she leaves school to be with him. Luminously synthesizing young love, the author writes: "...she walked blindly, taking his kisses on her neck up the street, bumping against him and moving on, two figures beneath the starlight, hand-locked, electric with desire."

The two families converge when, following William Coughlan's death, Nicholas goes to the island to recover his father's one masterpiece which had been given to Muiris Gore as a prize. Nicholas is welcomed by the Gore's and given loding in their home. It is there "that the plots of God and Love came together and were the same thing," as he learns what he was born to do.

Played against a backdrop of capricious Irish weather, Four Letters Of Love is a novel to celebrate. It is a sumptuous attestation of life and love.

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Summary: A book of lyrical fiction
Review: A love story set in an Ireland full of signs and wonders, the book tells the tales of Nicholas and Isabel, seemingly separate tragic stories of love and love lost that illustrate the randomness of life's trials and tribulations. But is life really random? Their intersection, seemingly random, begs the question: Is anything random, or is every step measured, does every action count?

Quite engrossing and compelling, I would have given it 5 stars but the ending, after so skillful and deft a buildup, is pathetic.

Well worth reading anyway!

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Summary: A cozy, true hearted read....
Review: I loved this book. I have read it 2 times so far. If you like heart warming stories, Niall Williams really presents a touching story here. It is a curious read all the way to the end, and even then the author leaves you a bit to imagine.

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Summary: great imagery
Review: I read this book close to two years ago, and I still feel that it has some of the best imagery that ive come across you can picture everything clearly- and the writing is so fluid and beautiful, theres nothing to jarr you. The only reason i didnt give it 5 stars is because it was an assignment to read this book. A wonderful travel book. Good for relaxation.

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Summary: A book that reminds me why I love books
Review: I was in the Connemara when I borrowed this book for a read. The descriptions of the beauty there matched my incredibly unmatchable impressions. Niall Williams seemed to capture all that I had grown to know and love about Ireland and to relate it to universal truths in the twists and turnings life offers us all. The tragic poetry of loss in the over-reaching patttern of nature and life, culminating in the idea that things work out when least expected are exactly what I experienced there and what changed me forever. The prose captured me, and I savored lines, reading them over and over. There are so many different kinds of love explored and facets of each kind explored in depth: married love, love for a son, love for a daughter, for a parent, for a partner, a brother, a sister, for the land and the sea, for yourself and for the dead. I, too, could not put this book down and was luckily sick in bed and didn't have to. Thank you, Mr. Williams, for this treasure. I purchased it after reading my borrowed copy and have loaned it out twice already. I can't wait for the next one. The celebration of the power of art and music in our loves and lives cannot be expounded upon enough. Feed my soul!

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Summary: Beautifully Written
Review: Niall Williams has a gift. He can describe eternity from the Irish point of view. Four Letters of Love is an eminently Irish story. It assumes a Catholic or Christian perspective of man as destined for eternity and guided by Providence even though it succumbs to fatalism. Mr. Williams aptly takes one through the journey of two similar souls that begin very much apart but converge towards each other in subtle, Providential ways. What distinguishes this book from many a story of two souls is the author's rare ability to describe life through "kairos" -- that Greek word for time signifying the convergece of time and place that resembles eternity -- rather than by "chronos" (or chronological events). And that, by itself, makes Four Letters of Love a truly poetic and human story. A story of love, true Irish love. By the end on the book one feels as Irish as the characters themselves, tossed by the tides of the sea much like the Irish coasts that play such an important role in the book. Mr. Williams' grammar is a joy to read and this book should be a must in the collection of ambitious writers and those seeking to understand the Irish a bit more. I recommend it for its rare purity and for its magnificent use of the English language.

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Summary: Spellbinding, Lucid, Picturesque, Permeating!
Review: Oh, how did I not find this book until now?
I'll give the very FEW downfalls, first.
It felt rushed towards the end, and I feel some of the most key events should undoubtedly been elaborated.
Next, WHY?? (is this not a movie YET??)
Incredibly moving, life changing.
The characters are so very well fleshed out, the smells, sounds, sights... were all so very REAL, I not only could see, smell, hear it all happening, most often it felt even deeper than that!
I felt like I knew the characters more than myself.
A perfect blend of tragedy, transendence, wonder, mystical beauty, a bit of wit, and life changing philosophical prose.
DO NOT~ pass this book up.

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Summary: A Glorious and Poetic Novel of Fated Love
Review: Steeped in local Irish lore this brillianted crafted and flawlessly rendered novel is a deep meditation on the mystical nature of love and destiny. The dreamlike plot is leisurely paced, unfolding one small piece at a time as seemingly random acts and incidents build and accrue and lead to the the eventual meeting of lovers Isabel and Nicholas. FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE makes magical sense of how every moment is woven into a larger whole and that the inability to understand fate is nothing more than an inability to gain the proper perspective. There is a deep logic in this universe and everything is as it should be. There is so much in this multi-layered book. Engrossing, provocative, haunting, lyrical, wise ... and to top it off it culminates with a great payoff and a very satisfying conclusion.

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Summary: The very very best
Review: The most beautiful love story ever written. Williams provides everything a good story needs: suspense, a few miracles, wonder, some life philosophy... Packaged as a love story, which few know how to write without getting sobby, Niall William's book has been one of my most enjoyable reads of recent time. Awesome!!

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Summary: Adult Fairy Tale
Review: This book is really more of an adult fairy tale; very dreamlike in its narration. It does, however, have beautiful prose and lyrics and is so well written by, I believe, a first-time author. It relates the bizarre relationship between a father and son, the strange behaviour of a young gifted girl and a painting that binds the characters together. At the beginning, the book was engrossing, it soon petered out towards an unsatisfactory conclusion. The book is extremely well written, but I'm not fond of one-dimensional characters and surreal storylines.