Rating: 
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: Magical
Review: A beautiful storty. Four Letters of Love is filled with sorrow and grief, love and romance, and the overwhelming power of destiny. Williams has given me hope that someday, I too, will meet my soul mate.
Rating: 
Summary: A meditation on love, art and the vicissitudes of oif life.
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!
Rating:
Summary: Mystical, Magical, Lyrical
Review: A wonderfully mystical story beautifully written. Makes your heart soar.
Rating:
Summary: Knocked me out!
Review: Although Mr. Williams at times seemed disconnected from his character's pain, I was consumed with how he brought Isabel and Nicholas together. I was angered at the way Nicholas was abandoned by each of his parents. I wished that Isabel could see how worthless Peader was and how much better she deserved. And by the end I physically ached with Nicholas' pain as each heart wrenching love letter was tossed to the flames instead of into Isabel's expectant arms. Mr. Williams' gift of expressing that tortured first love brought me back to my own delicious agony of 1970.
Rating:
Summary: This is an intensely Irish story and a good read!
Review: Although this book is wordy -- the prose is poetic in some places -- it's a wonder to read. Williams portrays the intense emotionalism of the Irish with a flourish. The characters and problems are of the real world, the miracles are not, especially the miracle of love. Yet these two worlds drift and blend together in a world entirely Irish. I enjoyed the book very much.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: For risk of repeating what has been said in other reviews, simply one of the best books I have ever read. I couldn't put it down. You just want to keep reading it and see how it ends, when it does you want more to know what will happen afterwards. While reading the book I just kept thinking of all the people I want to share it with. Absolutely amazing.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Day Classic
Review: Four Letters of Love is an extremely beautiful and intense novel. The imagry and symbolism utilized are quite powerful. Extremely well written - grabs you from the very beginning. I can definately say that it is one of the best books I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: This is a book I want to own.
Review: Four Letters of Love is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. It has the eloquent mysticism of the ancient Irish legends with the clarity of the twentieth century. Your hopes are dashed and lifted to Heaven on the same page. Anyone who's ever been in love will understand this story. Anyone who has been compelled to follow a dream will have lived this story. Anyone who IS in love will love this story. While I wait for Niall Williams's next novel I will be spending my time reading the books he and his wife have written about living in Ireland.
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