Recent Reviews
Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams
Four Letters of Love is a story about the mystical, often inexplicable ways people find their beloved. It’s hard to describe the beauty and grace of Niall Williams’ writing. His touch is light, his insights powerful, and each sentence overflows with lyricism. His reverence for the lush landscape of western Ireland and the people who dwell there can be felt in every line.
The book’s back cover states that Isabel Gore and Nicholas Coughlan are destined to be together. And though it’s frustrating that they don’t meet until the last third of the book, Williams seems intent on setting the stage first. In the early chapters, he reveals Isabel and Nicholas’ complicated backstories and the emotional forces that shaped them. These stories include childhood wounds, guilt and the complicated dynamics of each set of parents. Williams dissects and untangles those emotional strands with care and wisdom, adding context to their eventual meeting.
When Nicholas visits the island across the sea from Galway to seek a painting his father made, he falls hard for Isabel, and eventually she for him. Given their prior paths, the probability of their encounter is low, and their eventual meeting seems unlikely. To complicate matters, Isabel is already married. Yet out of the chaos and unpredictability of the world, Niall Williams suggests that sometimes blessings appear. Love’s path is not always straightforward, and Nicholas and Isabel’s connection takes time to take hold. The depth of their bond reveals itself most fully through Nicholas’ love letters.
Here is the short chapter in which he describes meeting Isabel for the first time.
“Some things do not bear telling. I think my father knew this. I think he knew how words can sometimes flatten the deepest emotions or pin them like wild butterflies stunned out of magnificent flight, flimsiest souvenirs of what moved and coloured air like silk. Better to image it. Imagine music playing, imagine light falling through the clouds into the morning street and the scent of the island following us as we walked to find the shop. Imagine there was nothing unlovely in the world, and that we walked as proof of miracles, our feet barely touching the path and smiles playing on our faces as the thousand birds sang in the sky. Imagine goodness floated from us into the city air and cars slowed to unwind windows and breathe the thick perfume that smelled like white candles and fresh linen. Imagine all the aches of the world had secretly mended, and music heralded the news, rising along allegro with notes like joy and laughter pealing as we opened the door. This is how I came to see Isabel Gore for the first time.”
Four Letter of Love is a gorgeous novel. Niall Williams pierces his characters’ hearts, reaches into their souls, and conveys their thoughts and feelings in beautiful, poetic prose. Highly recommend. 5/5
Whistler by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s moving new novel Whistler is a tender meditation on connection, memory, and healing. Though divorce, grief, and trauma run through the story, the novel is uplifting, not bleak. Patchett writes with characteristic insight about childhood experiences, both remembered and buried, that quietly shape the adults we become. As in Commonwealth (2016) and The Dutch House (2019), the aftermath of divorce occupies the emotional center of the novel, and is also depicted with insight, humor, and grace.
A chance encounter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City reunites 53-year-old Daphne Fuller with her former stepfather, Eddie Triplett. Eddie was married only briefly to Daphne’s mother, and 40 years have passed since he and Daphne last saw one another. Still, his brief presence in her childhood left an indelible mark. Their interests aligned, their banter came easily, and Eddie’s warmth offered comfort to nine-year-old Daphne. She loved him. Together, they had survived a traumatic car accident that deepened their bond: it was Eddie’s kindness and courage in that dire moment that helped keep them alive as they waited to be rescued. Soon after the accident, Daphne’s mother divorced Eddie and contact between them ceased.
When Daphne and Eddie meet again in the novel’s opening chapter, the past returns with startling force. Daphne is overcome with emotion. Daphne says, “And with that I bowed my head and covered my face. I hadn’t known there was something in me to break, but there it was and break it did. I stepped into an open crack in time and fell backwards.”
Later, she realizes, “…somewhere deep inside myself, in a place inaccessible to me since I was nine, I had missed him every day of my life.”
As adults, Daphne and Eddie are given the rare chance to recover what time seemed to have taken from them. They spend long hours together retracing the paths their lives took in the decades apart and eventually speaking openly about the night of the accident. Through Daphne and Eddie, Patchett beautifully shows how certain people remain lodged in the heart and how love can endure beneath the surface of ordinary life. Whistler is a wistful novel illuminating that healing, even if delayed, is possible. 5/5
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout has written another gem. She has a remarkable ability to deeply probe the psyches of her characters while delivering a perceptive and absorbing read. In this novel, her 11th, she dives even deeper into that well.
Artie Dam, a beloved high school history teacher, is depressed. He feels alone and isolated—not because he lacks people to talk to or spend time with; he doesn’t. He is surrounded by people who love him: his wife of 30 years, his grown son, his fellow teachers, his students, and his friends. Rather, it is an internal angst that plagues him, leaving him with the sense that most thoughts are meant to remain solitary, not shared. The divisive divisions in this country don’t help.
When Artie learns a profound secret about his life, he must decide how to proceed with this knowledge. The revelation forces him to recognize that we don’t truly know ourselves—and sometimes not even the people closest to us. Toward the book’s ending, he thinks he might know why people never say the thoughts closest to their hearts. “Because to say anything real was to say things nobody wanted to know, or if they wanted to know, they would not care in the right way. Or even understand. It’s a private thing to be alive.”
Strout continues to explore the human condition with persistence and curiosity. Though the book is psychologically astute, its ethos is heavy and existential. Author Elizabeth Day’s blurb on the back sums up this novel beautifully: “Strout is a brilliant chronicler of the ambiguity and delicacy of the human condition.” Highly recommend. 5/5
