Cuatro Cartas Errantes Book

I liked this book very much. It is the second book I read of Niall Williams' oeuvre, the first being his most recent work, "This is Happiness" (2019), and I liked that one a great deal too. This is his first work of fiction (1997)…he had 4 previous works prior to "Four Letters of Love" that were co-authored with his wife Christine Breen, and memoirs of living and traveling in Ireland.

I read this book in one sitting perhaps in part because I was struck by a comment on the inner front cover by Marianne Faithfull, an English singer, songwriter, and actress who became one of the lead female artists during the British Invasion in the United States (As Tears Go By): "I never thought I would find such an honorable and well-written book about love and truth, men and women, heart and despair ' Four Letters of Love is a joy, an acutely evocative and sexual story…and my God, I wouldn't put it down." So if she could read it in one sitting, then I could too! 😊 But it turned out it wasn't a challenge I made with myself that made me read it in one sitting…I did so because it was such a satisfying read. In reading his most recent novel (This is Happiness), I was struck by the beautiful prose so much I bookmarked different passages. I did not do any such bookmarking in this read - I was content with just marveling at some sentences and passages as I read them.

There are two central protagonists Nicholas and Isabel, and to give away the circumstances under how they met would give away pretty much the main point of the novel. We learn a great deal about them, however, before they meet. We learn about their parents who also have their own interesting stories to tell. We learn of Isobel's little brother Sean who one day has an accident on the beach when he is 10 and Isobel is 11. Once a lively chap, he is struck dumb with some mystery illness and is never the same again. She harbors a great deal of guilt for that, although nobody blames her for it. But it influences her choices later on in life. Nicholas was a young boy when his father was told by God to paint…and so the father obeyed God but by doing so caused a great deal of pain for Nicholas and his mother. Or as Nicholas in the first paragraph of the book put it: When I was 12 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, returning to a seat amongst the angels and watching through the clouds over the grey city to see what would happen next.

The last sentence of the book was so important and so beautiful I read it 3 times. I'll probably return to it (13 lines of text!) because it brought so much satisfaction and pleasure to me (now that's a way to end a story!).

Random notes:
• I ordered this book a long time ago from abebooks.com after reading his latest work "This is Happiness." I wanted to read all of his works. When I pulled it out of its mailer yesterday something struck me about the book jacket like I had seen it before. So eventually I went to one of my bookcases where I have Irish and UK literature and sure enough there it was ' I already had the book! I even had a November 1997 book review of it from The New York Times (reviewed by Katharine Weber, author of "Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear" and "Music Lesson") nestled in its pages. But I had never read the book.
• Marianne Faithfull on April 21 was discharged from the hospital following a three-week hospitalization from COVID-19, having fully recovered from the virus.

Reviews:
• "Four Letters of Love is formed with an unusual authority and grace, and it is filled with marvelous characters, large and small, all depicted with an understated veracity." - Notable Book of the Year, The New York Times Book Review
• "A compelling meditation on love, art and the vicissitudes of fate." - San Francisco Chronicle
• "While a wealth of impressions linger from this debut, two words come most often to mind in describing it: Spellbinding. Brilliant." - starred review, Kirkus Reviews
• "This book can rightly claim its place among the classics of Irish literarure. A wonderfully affecting love story." - Belfast Telegraph
• "A breathtaking affirmation of magic, miracles and the power of human love." - The Times
• "Thoughtful, wonderfully wrought passages that soar and soar. Highly recommended." - Library Journal