Four Letters of Love [Paperback]

Niall Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1998

A tale of destiny, acceptance, & the tragedies & miracles of everyday life.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In a dingy little city in Ireland, civil servant William Coughlin abandons his job and his family because he believes God has commanded him to paint. The son wants to hate his father but cannot, eventually following him into the west of Ireland to try to understand his father's motivations and redeem his life. On an island off the west coast of Ireland, young Isabel blames herself when her gifted little brother falls mysteriously mute and lame, and though she heads to the mainland for schooling?her school teacher father has great dreams for her, expecting her to redeem his life?her guilt and her passionate nature combine to drive her off course. Naturally, these two stories meet and blend beautifully in Williams's lyrical, dreamy first novel, which more than anything else is a meditation on the love, both sacred and profane, that shapes us. Both William and Isabel look for signs from God, and both are disappointed. But there is a miracle at the end that redeems everyone. Readers will find the occasional passage of grievous overwriting that one might expect from a beginner and just as often thoughtful, wonderfully wrought passages that soar and soar. Highly recommended.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A remarkable first novel from Williams--whose four previous books, written with his wife, have chronicled contemporary Irish life (The Luck of the Irish, 1995, etc.)--offers a powerful portrait of tragedy and of the redemption offered by love. Nicholas was a normal Dublin 12-year-old when his civil- servant father came home to announce he'd forsaken his career to become a painter. The full implications of that decision became clear shortly thereafter: Abandoning wife and son, the artist went off to the Irish countryside for the summer. After two summers of this and no income, Nicholas's mother committed suicide. Father and son struggled on, making one memorable painting trip to the western coast, after which cows destroyed many of the paintings, leaving the artist in doubt of his vocation. Years pass. Nicholas's own civil service career is cut short when his father burns his paintings, their house, and himself. Only one painting remains, a work that had been purchased and given as an award to a poet living on one of the western isles, and Nicholas goes to see whether he can buy it back. The poet's family is also familiar with despair: The only son, a musical prodigy, suffered a seizure one day while playing for his dancing sister, Isabel, and for years has been unable to play or speak. Isabel, blaming herself for his affliction, grew wild in her mainland convent school and threw away a good chance at a university education to marry a coarse, unprosperous tweed merchant whom she doesn't love. Nicholas arrives on the scene the day after Isabel's wedding, and his presence magically, inexplicably, begins to cause a shift in the prevailing winds of fortune. While a wealth of impressions linger from this debut, two words come most often to mind in describing it: Spellbinding. Brilliant. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 2nd Edition edition (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446674931
• ISBN-13: 978-0446674935
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #643,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Written, October 23, 2004

By 

Roberto Helguera - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Four Letters of Love (Paperback)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Life is a mystery. We cannot understand it.", November 25, 2005

By 

Matthew M. Yau "Voracious reader" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Four Letters of Love (Paperback)

FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE is a typical story of miracle. The most memorable message out of this debut of the Irish writer is "life is a mystery, we cannot understand it. Once you accept that, it hurts less." In fact, the reading of the first few chapters does not seem to forebode any miracle or happiness. Miracle, after all, is a product of some circuitous events.

Nicholas Coughlan's father decides to quit his job in the government, abandons his family, and becomes a painter - because God has spoken to him. He leaves Nicholas and his mother behind and takes up painting in Dublin. Nicholas' mother dies of brooding over the reason why her marriage has turned cold. The little boy loses his confidence and respect in his father. As he traces the footsteps of his father and tries to make sense of this ethereal revelation to which his father scrupulously abides, he realizes that happiness for his family is not meant to come simply, that in some inexorable way his family has been singled out. Nicholas is waiting for a miracle.

When God speaks to Nicholas' father the second time he takes his life. He has sat in front of a heater and fed into it his canvases until the home burns crumbling down around him. Nicholas ponders that his father might have maddened himself with the thought that perhaps there had never been a voice from God and that the ruins of the life in which he finds himself has all been caused by his own folly. So the inconsolable truth about the Coughlans is that there has never been a call, yet nothing makes sense unless one looks at the occurrences in a grand picture. The now coming-of-age Nicholas resolves to recover the only painting that survives the fire - one that his father has given it away as a prize for a poetry contest. It possesses meaning for his life because it has not survived for nothing.

Isabel Gore lives in persistent guilt that she is responsible for her brother's fit at the seaside. She feels a prisoner of what she has done (or has not done) as weeks stretch into months and then years - nobody can shoulder for her the baggage of her heart. It begins to seem as if what has happened on the shelf of rock by the sea has eternally robbed him of speech and movement and has given no reason. Isabel too, is waiting for a miracle.

She never knows she will fall in love during the last year of high school and the love affair will have rendered her mindless about going to university. In utter insolence and insubordination the nuns at the covent school lose control of her - it is one of those moments in life when the plot jolts forward and understanding and planning vanish in a rash manner to an extent that she banishes forever the uncertainty of her feelings for the son of a Dublin tweed hat maker.

But Nicholas and Isabel are made for each other. How would they have known? The series of events that develop around these two unrelated families somehow cross one another's paths and trigger the making of a miracle. All the open-ended threads slowly converge as strangers enter each other's spheres of living in a circuitous manner. While for most of the novel we see how lives shatter with the fall of one day's light, FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE is an unforgettable tale about the illuminating power of love. It's about affirmation of destiny, love, and miracle.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is happiness a mere intermission between disasters?, July 11, 2000

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Four Letters of Love (Paperback)

With easy, almost casual, lyricism, Niall Williams spins the separate stories of two Irish families, then weaves them together to create his story of love. And like many other Irish writers, he conveys a love that is simultaneously both romantic and religious, though decidedly not ecclesiastical. When Nicholas was twelve, "God spoke to [Nicholas's] father for the first time. God didn't say much. He told [Nicholas's] father to be a painter, and left it at that...." Answering the heavenly call, the father leaves his family for long periods of time and spends the rest of his life trying to create masterpieces, finally succeeding, only to have virtually all his work destroyed by the most earthly of causes: cows. Similarly, in another family, a brilliantly musical boy, while engaging in an energetic, enthusiastic paeon of happiness is suddenly and mysteriously struck down, unable to move or speak. Both families must simply accept the seeming arbitrariness of what has happened.

As Williams develops these stories, his focus is clearly on the earthly, mundane aspects of life with its hope, its humor, and its crushing disappointments, but he conveys a strong sense that a Higher Power is "in charge," however unfathomable His actions might be to the mere mortals involved. In an ending which is part religious mysticism, part magic realism, and part pure romance, the ultimate resolution takes place, leaving the reader delighted by the happiness of some characters but uncertain at the costs to others. And we cannot help but wonder if that happiness may be only an intermission between disasters and hope that it is not.