Do You like book Four Letters Of Love (2006)?
When I was twelve years old God spoke to my father for the first time. God didn’t say much. He told my father to be a painter, and left it at that,This is Niall Williams first book. I read it after enjoying The History of the Rain. Niall Williams is also a painter, and a poet. Common themes through the stories he writes. He paints the images with words and evokes feeling and imagery and sense of place. I gave this four stars as I found that while the language and writing were so well done, the story, which is essentially a love story, seems quite tragic. I am not sure if it is an Irish thing, but the older generation in the story see love as a tragedy, not something to be pursued and celebrated. Well worth the read though but Rain was better. I guess all writers mature with each book they write.
—Tanya
The epigraph to this book is Ovid's 'Lovers pave the way with letters.' It's a great pity we don't write love letters much any more (love emails and love texts just don't have the same alliterative ring nor can they 'pave the way', with such promise)... but this is a marvellous, lyrically-written, magical book about love, by a man. Why am I surprised? Because most men aren't brave enough to write about love with such honesty and yearning and a sense of the mystical. But this man is an Irishman and this book is proof that the Irish sensibility allows a man to write about love like an angel. I remember synaesthetic scenes: words becoming ribbons and music becoming veils of colour. Throughout the book Williams suggests that love is a kind of mystical madness, a kind of heartsickness, a soulfully troubling matter that must be borne with hope and then the rewards will come, eventually. It tells us that to love is to find oneself and that love is a spiritual quest. Beautiful.
—Angela Young
This book was a quick read for me. And while I took away the message that love is the whole purpose of a life well lived and that to die without loving is such a shame, I couldn't truly immerse myself in this book. Perhaps it was too short, perhaps I just didn't get to know the characters that well.My most memorable quote:"As I write this to you, there are about 4.5 billion people on this planet and I read about a very interesting study done by a popular scientist who calculated roughly 105 billion people have lived on our planet in total since the time Homo Sapiens came into existence. And obviously every single one of them had to pack up and leave when their time was up, so death is not something that happened only to Julie, or would happen in due course to me. It happens daily so there's no big deal about it.The point is with death as the common denominator and with belief, religion, profession, wealth, time, place, era, and countless other differentiators in those billions of lives, only those who had the courage to live their dreams for whatever time they were here, had solace in their heart at the time of crossing over, at the time of finishing the journey and going into the unknown.You can take pride in the fact that your parents lived that kind of life, so rejoice son, for there is no reason to feel sad."A definite 3 star rating all the same.
—Briget mazzetta
