As It Is in Heaven

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Summary: An Old-Fashioned Love Story
Review: "As It Is In Heaven" is my favorite Niall Williams book. Part of the reason it is my favorite is the fact that it takes place in Ireland and in Venice...two of my favorite places in the world. And Ireland and Venice are perfect locales for this story with its distinctly fairy tale quality. There is magic in "As It Is In Heaven" and it is definitely Irish magic.

The characters in this book are all emotionally and spiritually damaged, but then who isn't? Still, Philip, Stephen and Gabriella seem to be a little more damaged and vulnerable to pain than are most and they really come to life in this book. Williams does a superb job of baring their souls and letting us share in their emotions.

Philip Griffin is a man who blames himself for the death of his wife and young daughter many years ago (although he is blameless). Stephen, his son, now thirty-two, was raised and loved by his father, but it is clear that the loss of his mother has affected him deeply. He is a man who knows "the fine skills of walking in empty rooms and being aware of the ghosts." Although the story isn't predictable, its theme is clear: this is a story about the redemptive power of love, the power of love to heal, to make whole.

Stephen feels his life begin to heal when he meets the beautiful Venetian violinist, Gabriella Castoldi. Gabriella is a women who is fighting ghosts of her own. An "expectancy of grief" hovers over her at all times; it is so powerful it even affects those with whom she interacts.

This is a story that could so easily have fallen into the very maudlin. And sometimes Williams does give in to the temptation to write a little over-the-top. Love doesn't heal all wounds; it's no magic panacea of beauty and poetry and it can sometimes cause more problems than it solves. This is something Williams seems to want to forget.

Williams rescues (and balances) his story, however, with insight into the human soul that is heartbreakingly accurate, achingly perceptive and beautifully wise. And, sometimes these insights come from unexpected sources, making them all the more believable and welcome.

The fey, fairy tale quality of this book will no doubt draw some readers in while causing others to discard it as "too romantic." I think I fall somewhere in between. Love doesn't solve all problems, love can't endure against all odds, yet love is the force that drives the universe and gives meaning to our lives. I found I was able to forgive Williams' ventures into the overly-lyrical and enjoy "As It Is In Heaven" for the beautiful love story it is.

Williams' prose is very lyrical, very poetic and very romantic, but this book is still exceptionally well-written. And sometimes, a very romantic story is just what I'm looking for. Although I don't believe love can conquer all, I certainly believe in its healing and redemptive powers.

I don't think there's an author alive who writes of the pain and beauty of love with quite the magic of Niall Williams. If you're in the mood for an old-fashioned love story, one that will make you laugh and cry and sigh, then you really can't do better than "As It Is In Heaven." Leave reality behind when you enter this magic world; just savor the book and let it become a part of you.

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Summary: sweet love story
Review: A story for all of us romantics. As It Is In Heaven is about the love of a shy schoolteacher and a passionate violinist. It is written in an Irish setting. Stephen Griffen a shy school teacher and lead a very lonely life after his mother & sister were killed in a car accident. His father took no interest in him or his brother's lives. Silence became a part of their life from that point on. From the moment Stephen met Gabrella Castoldi he could not keep his mind off of her. Stephen's father does not approve of the union. In this story, Stephen's life is forever changed, as well as everyone around him.

Such a wonderful sweet story that is uplifting as well. A must buy for any one who loves a good love story. I would recommend it.

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Summary: A MOVING EXPLORATION OF LOVE'S TERRAIN
Review: As in his deeply affecting debut novel, Four Letters Of Love, Irish writer Niall Williams again explores the emotional terrain of that ever fascinating emotion - love. Woven of magic and touching reality, As It Is In Heaven once more showcases the author's luminous prose in an enchanting narrative that soars and sings as gloriously as the music of Puccini and Vivaldi he so eloquently describes.

Set in mythic villages and along Ireland's craggy, unforgiving coast, As It Is In Heaven traces the evolution of three people who have been broken by loss; it would seem irreparably so. Their days are contoured by foreboding. No longer active participants in life, they are the heartsore, docile legatees of parsimonious Fate.

Mourning shrouds the life of Philip Griffin, a retired tailor, who asks God why his wife and 10-year-old daughter were allowed to die in a tragic auto accident some 20 years earlier. When there is no answer from God, Philip believes, "The fault was his own, the judgment had fallen not on them but upon him. For it was the survivor who suffered."

This suffering is mirrored in his son, Stephen, now 28, and a schoolteacher in western Ireland. The shared question of why they have survived has forged a bond between father and son, "They did not speak of it but took the puzzle of their days everywhere with them, growing an identical jagged wrinkle across the middle of their foreheads and talking fitfully in the brief periods of their night sleep."

Philip's solace is found in the knowledge that he will be reunited with his wife and daughter after he has done whatever he can for his son.

Not daring to imagine that love is real for it would make life too hard, Stephen finds a modicum of peace by accepting his solitude, and turning ever more inward. "Life had imbued him with a deep humility and then nourished it with a Catholic sense of his own unworthiness."

Nonetheless, love does find an incredulous Stephen. When an Italian String Quartet comes for a performance in County Clare, he sees Gabriella Castoldi, a lovely master violinist, and his days are forever altered. Gifted, enigmatic, and alone, she has never forgotten her father's description of love - it's like a cheap perfume that soon wears off.

When Philip, who is ill, learns that Stephen is in love, he fears for his son, believing such passion will be unrequited and only bring further pain. "Desperate for a stay of death to help his son," Philip makes a pact with God - "If you let me live.....I will try and do some act of goodness each day." To this end he withdraws a major portion of his savings to give away.

The naive, introverted Stephen, to his utter surprise, boundless joy, and sometimes dismay, recognizes that he is in love. Forgetting all else, including his teaching position, he begins an ardent pursuit of Gabriella. Puzzlement is her first response, followed by disbelief that a man capable of such selfless devotion could exist. Her reaction is appropriate, as there is common ground between them: "the expectation of failure and the familiarity of despair."

For Stephen. Gabriella's acquiescence is hard won, and even more difficult to keep. They are together only briefly when Gabriella announces that she is returning to Venice, and even as she speaks "wondering why she felt the brutal necessity of testing love, of bending its back towards breaking, and trying to bring on before time the grief she imagined was inevitable."

There's mysticism in this story - mysticism in the beliefs of the unforgettably fey Nelly Grant, the greengrocer who nourishes the couple. There is also magic - magic in the pen of Niall Williams who stunningly extrapolates the essence of love. Read As It Is In Heaven and rejoice.

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Summary: love to believe in, or.....
Review: Having read Niall Williams two other books, Four letters of Love, and The Fall of Light, I was really looking forward to this book. Still it was waiting a long time in my shelves untill I started it, and when I did it took me some time to get into.

Williams is a master of the written word. His language is strong, and captivates you in a way few other writers do. His books are about everlasting love, and of lost, though he never writes in a sentimentaly way. In As It Is In Heaven we meet Philip Griffin and his son Stephen. The two of them are alone in the world after the tragical death of Philip's wife and young daughter. The death of these two dominates the life of the two men and the whole book. All Philip has to live for is his son, and the knowledge that when he has done what he has to do for his son, he will meet his wife again in heaven.

The way Williams write about love underline the believe I have in love. Love is strong, love can live through everything, love can do everything. And for Philip Griffin life and love is like this. And this is also what his son learns. Love is everything. Stephen grows up with the shadows of his past over his life, when he meets Gabriella Castoldi, the Italian musician who change Stephens life for ever. We now follow Stephen, the man who can give nothing less than his whole life, and Gabriella, the woman who doesn't know to live with this "whole life" Stephen is offering her. This is the strong theme in the book, but this is at the same time what makes it hard for me to believe in the book. Stephen is giving so much, how can a man really act like this? And at the same time, Gabriella seems uncapable of recieving all this love.

Williams style of writing is poetic, and ge goes deep into what he writes about. Though this is not his best book he is still one of my favorite writers of today. I look forward to more from his pen.

Britt Arnhild Lindland

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Summary: Lyrical and Lovely
Review: Niall Williams can really string up words and feelings together into a magical story. Yes, he is a hardcore romantic, however, his story comes out sweet and intoxicating, and not soppy and predictable. I read "Four Letters of Love" and got hooked up with his style of writing. This is a story of somebody who is gripped by love that he is willing to chase his dream ... the story of a sad violinist called Gabriella Castoldi and a lonely teacher called Stephen Griffin, and how Divine intervention plays a part in their relationship ...

If you like imaginative, romantic story, and you want to smile or cry because you can remember yourself being in that position before, and having it narrated in such a beautiful way, do get a copy of "As it is in Heaven", or better still, give it to your loved one!

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Summary: Review of "As It Is in Heaven"
Review: Niall Williams must be a poet in his soul. "As It Is in Heaven" is poetry written in the form of prose. This story of a father yearning to relate to his son -- "Philip loved his son as a wall loves a garden" -- and the son at last discovering love spares none of the harshness -- or beauty -- of County Clare weather and topography yet leaves the reader with a sense of having survived the cruelties of life and environment to experience loveliness and completion. Dublin, too, with its complexity and busyness, takes on life as another character.

The story itself is compelling. I was eager to learn the outcome of the characters' struggles yet was sorry to reach the end and say "Goodbye" to Philip and Steven.

In August I had the pleasure of meeting Niall Williams and Christine Breen, his wife and co-writer for their first four books. Their home seems an oasis of beauty and serenity in the countryside of Clare. Niall'a first novel, "Four Faces of Love," also is imbued with a poetic atmosphere. I look forward to his third novel, due to appear in 2002.

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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.

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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.

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Summary: The terrible beauty that is both love and Ireland...
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.