Four Letters of Love

by NiallWilliams (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.34

  When an Irish civil servant abandons his wife and 12-year-old son for two summers to pursue his dream of becoming a painter, the stage is set for dramatic changes in the household. Despondent from the lack of income, the mother commits suicide, leaving Nicholas and his father to eke out a meager living. Years later, after a series of mishaps, Nicholas' father burns his paintings, their house, and himself. Nicholas, now himself a civil servant, is a man with a mission. He casts aside his current life to try to regain the only surviving painting of his father's work. His quest takes him to Galway, where he finds much more than he ever anticipated.

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.84

  '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 ...' So begins Niall Williams' magical tale about love and destiny. Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore were made for each other - but fate doesn't always take the easiest or the most obvious route to true love. For a start, Nicholas and Isabel have never met and nor are they likely to, without some kind of divine intervention. But as God, ghosts, a series of coincidences and seemingly chance events and encounters conspire to bring the couple together, other - often more human - forces attempt to keep them apart. 'What will be, will be,' of course, but that doesn't guarantee a happy-ever-after ending, nor answer the question 'Will they, won't they?' Written in a lyrical, lilting tone, Four Letters of Love is a glorious, uplifting story about faith, about seizing the moment, believing in your instincts and acting on impulse - and about following your heart, no matter where it may lead.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1997

  $12.75

  Four Letters Of Love describes how two people set out on a journey towards each other, neither quite knowing that the journey has begun. Nicholas Coughlan is twelve, living with his parents just outside Dublin, when God speaks to his father, telling him to give up his job and devote his life to painting. The household is thrown into disarray, with Nicholas and his mother left in bitter, bemused poverty as his father sporadically disappears, obeying what he ardently believes to be God's command. Across the country, on an island off the west coast, isabel Gore lives with her family: her drunken, disappointed father; her sad but forbearing mother; and her brother, Sean, once a musical genlus but now, after a mysterious selzure, unable to walk or speak. Isable is sent away from the island, to convent school in Galway, but finding the restrictions of life with the nuns unbearable, and burdened by guilt at the fate of her brother, she takes the first opportunity to make what looks like an escape. Nicholas and Isabel were made for each other, but how will they ever know it? Four Letters Of Love is a novel about destiny, acceptance and the tragedies and miracles of everyday life. Most of all it is an unforgettable, magical story about the illuminating power of love in all its guises.