As It Is in Heaven

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!

Clearly Williams thinks so. In FLOL and now in As it is in Heaven, through timing, coincidence, fate, whatever you want to call it, two finely drawn and extraordinary characters come upon each other and nothing is ever the same again. As in FLOL this is a novel of place where the Irish coast and its villages are vividly drawn by Williams' prose. The lovers are facinating - an unlikely but inevitable match but, more than in FLOL, As it is in Heaven is populated by several other wonderful characters - Steven's father with his rituals and faith, the Indian doctor, a fixture in the medical systems of all the old British dominions, the headmistress and the landlady and their assumptions. All made this a rich, satifying read. I laughed,I wept and I sighed. For me, this book explored "fated" lovers with more complexity than FLOL, a natural progression in this second novel. My experience with both has led me to trust Williams and suspend my need for the rational and the sensible - and believe that there are relationships where the attraction between two people is so powerful that it is impossible to contemplate a life where they do not connect. I savoured every bit of it and can hardly wait for the next set of explorations.

I really loved both "Four Letters Of Love" and Niall Williams' newest "As It Is In Heaven." I think many of those who have read this book and reviewed it looked too deeply into the meaning of the book. And thus many of you were expecting too much from it, hoping that it would be similiar to Four Letters Of Love. But where would originality come from if Williams were to write his books exactly the same? One reviewer said that it was too painful for her to read that Stephen was simply in love, that Stephen as Williams wrote "..was in love". Why does love have to contain confusion, torment, and hurt to prove that in fact it is love? I felt what Stephen had and knew he could possess for Gabriella throughout the book and when he simply said to her over the phone that he loved her, it could not have been more moving and powerful to hear a man say those words to a woman without any other word needed to be spoken. I loved this book and it is simple as that. I could not put it down. Love can be the simplest emotion to feel and to present to another person. Niall Williams shows this through Stephen and his character's never ending love for the one woman he has ever loved, Gabriella. Why is that so hard to see?

There should be a big buzz over this book and this author - Where is Oprah when you really need her? Williams' writing is absolutely breathtaking. It was so good that I literally had to take "rests" between chapters to savor what I had read. This is a wonderful follow-up to The Four Letters of Love which I also highly recommend.