Reading matters

'As it is in Heaven' by Niall Williams

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 310 pages; 1999.

Niall Williams is a master at writing heart-wrenching, quietly beautiful novels about love -- and usually loss -- set in modern day rural Ireland. So I was eagerly looking forward to immersing myself in another of his timeless, lyrical tales. But, sadly, As it is in Heaven, his second novel after his oh-so wonderful Four Letters of Love, did not live up to expectation.

The story makes a promising enough start -- an emotionally starved young teacher, Steven Griffin, falls in love with a violinist, the passionate and beautiful Gabriella from Venice, who is touring the west of Ireland with an orchestra. But she is not aware of his existence and so the relationship is conducted largely in his head until, one fateful day, he works up enough courage to speak to her.

The pair then conduct a rather steamy love affair, but Gabriella, who is nursing wounds from a failed relationship, is not quite sure of her feelings for Stephen and unexpectedly returns to her homeland, leaving him in the lurch.

To say anything more would ruin the plot, but it's no spoiler to say that the course of true love experiences a few bumpy moments along the way...

'Only Say The Word' by Niall Williams

Fiction - paperback; QPD edition; 264  pages; 2004.

A love of books and the joy of reading figure prominently in this beguiling novel by Irish writer Niall Williams.

It begins with a forty-something man writing a love letter to his deceased wife. He lives in County Clare with his two grieving children -- teenager Hannah and eight-year-old Jack -- and feels so disconnected from them and his own life, that the only way to make sense of what has happened is to pen his autobiography. And so, through two intertwined narratives -- one set in the past, one set in the present -- we get to discover Jim Foley's life, his loves, his secrets.