18/04: AS IT IS IN HEAVEN BY NIALL WILLIAMS
The opening words of this thrilling novel are; “There are only three great puzzles in the world, the puzzle of love, the puzzle of death, and, between each of these and a part of both of them, the puzzle of God. God is the greatest puzzle of all.”
This novel is set in Ireland in modern times. And it is about love, death and God. Stephen Griffin is the grown son of Phillip Griffin and each of them attempts to make their way through life that has been knocked off course by the death of wife/mother and daughter/sister in an auto accident. Phillip lives in the now empty house, forgetting nearly every day that his wife and daughter are gone. Stephen has found a quiet corner of Ireland as a history teacher in an elementary school, and there expects little of life but to get through it.
But life will not unfold so quietly and so emptily. Pressed by another faculty member to buy a ticket to a string quartet concert in a nearby hotel lobby, on the way to which on a rainy night Stephen’s car slides off the road and he finds himself in the dark and in the rain a bit bruised and confused. Fortunately the same person who has sold him the ticket, sees the headlights of the car in a field just off the road, and she stops to help him. She drives Stephen, wet and dirty, to the concert. And there Stephen, in the back of the room, finds himself transported by the music and especially by Gabriella, the women who plays violin in the group.
The next time he visits his father for a regular date to play chess and listen to opera music on the turntable, his father notices the state of his son and guesses that he has fallen in love.
The rest of the novel is about Stephen’s search for Gabriella, a search that takes him to Venice, the city that is Gabriella’s home, and back to Ireland again. It follows Phillip as he seeks to either assist his son to fulfill the love that is in him, or to help him to survive if that search should be futile. Phillip is found to be ill and he knows, and has confirmed that his illness is terminal. He prays that God will let him live long enough to see his son through his crisis.
Phillip was a tailor in his work life and he decides that the one thing he knows he can do for his son is to make him a suit. So he goes to the cloth provider he used when he was working . And he buys fine cloth. He gathers his tools and lays the cloth out on the floor of his small house and estimates the cutting of the cloth from his intimate knowledge of his son’s body compared to his own. And in a beautiful act of love, he makes for his son a suit that can comfort and protect him in his search for his love.
Another resolve that Phillip makes as he sees the end of his life coming toward him, is to take his resources from the bank and do acts of goodness. He chooses to take each day a sum of money and hid it in public places in his town and let God decide who should find it, depending on God’s wisdom and mercy to guide those who need it to these little treasures.
We follow Stephen on his search for Gabiella, which is finally successful and after tests and failures, it becomes apparent to both of these two young people that they do indeed love each other and set out to make a life for themselves and a new child they have conceived. The novel ends on an Irish beach on the Atlantic where Stephen had owned a little house. Gabriella decides that once the baby is born, she wants more than anything else, to open a music school. So the novel ends on this quiet beach with a new modest building that is soon filled with children learning and making music.
Among the joys of this book is the beautiful writing, for instance “ Stephen Griffin had first seen Gabriella Castoldi playing the violin in a concert in the thick-curtained upstairs room of the Old Ground Hotel in Ennis in Count Clare. He had not intended to be there and marvelled often afterwards howone moment leads to the next, until the pattern of our lives seems inevitable.”
Or, “ And in the simple, brief, and yet momentous way in which life is decided, in which the hold of the past is released and the future arrives like a new skin, Gabriella closed her eyes and at last surrendered to that impulse that was as timeless, inevitable, and relentless as spring itself, and was the subject of all the songs the men were singing in the town below.”
When I first read the this book some years ago, I bought as many copies as I could afford and gave them to friends whom I believed would be moved by it as I was.
Trent
This novel is set in Ireland in modern times. And it is about love, death and God. Stephen Griffin is the grown son of Phillip Griffin and each of them attempts to make their way through life that has been knocked off course by the death of wife/mother and daughter/sister in an auto accident. Phillip lives in the now empty house, forgetting nearly every day that his wife and daughter are gone. Stephen has found a quiet corner of Ireland as a history teacher in an elementary school, and there expects little of life but to get through it.
But life will not unfold so quietly and so emptily. Pressed by another faculty member to buy a ticket to a string quartet concert in a nearby hotel lobby, on the way to which on a rainy night Stephen’s car slides off the road and he finds himself in the dark and in the rain a bit bruised and confused. Fortunately the same person who has sold him the ticket, sees the headlights of the car in a field just off the road, and she stops to help him. She drives Stephen, wet and dirty, to the concert. And there Stephen, in the back of the room, finds himself transported by the music and especially by Gabriella, the women who plays violin in the group.
The next time he visits his father for a regular date to play chess and listen to opera music on the turntable, his father notices the state of his son and guesses that he has fallen in love.
The rest of the novel is about Stephen’s search for Gabriella, a search that takes him to Venice, the city that is Gabriella’s home, and back to Ireland again. It follows Phillip as he seeks to either assist his son to fulfill the love that is in him, or to help him to survive if that search should be futile. Phillip is found to be ill and he knows, and has confirmed that his illness is terminal. He prays that God will let him live long enough to see his son through his crisis.
Phillip was a tailor in his work life and he decides that the one thing he knows he can do for his son is to make him a suit. So he goes to the cloth provider he used when he was working . And he buys fine cloth. He gathers his tools and lays the cloth out on the floor of his small house and estimates the cutting of the cloth from his intimate knowledge of his son’s body compared to his own. And in a beautiful act of love, he makes for his son a suit that can comfort and protect him in his search for his love.
Another resolve that Phillip makes as he sees the end of his life coming toward him, is to take his resources from the bank and do acts of goodness. He chooses to take each day a sum of money and hid it in public places in his town and let God decide who should find it, depending on God’s wisdom and mercy to guide those who need it to these little treasures.
We follow Stephen on his search for Gabiella, which is finally successful and after tests and failures, it becomes apparent to both of these two young people that they do indeed love each other and set out to make a life for themselves and a new child they have conceived. The novel ends on an Irish beach on the Atlantic where Stephen had owned a little house. Gabriella decides that once the baby is born, she wants more than anything else, to open a music school. So the novel ends on this quiet beach with a new modest building that is soon filled with children learning and making music.
Among the joys of this book is the beautiful writing, for instance “ Stephen Griffin had first seen Gabriella Castoldi playing the violin in a concert in the thick-curtained upstairs room of the Old Ground Hotel in Ennis in Count Clare. He had not intended to be there and marvelled often afterwards howone moment leads to the next, until the pattern of our lives seems inevitable.”
Or, “ And in the simple, brief, and yet momentous way in which life is decided, in which the hold of the past is released and the future arrives like a new skin, Gabriella closed her eyes and at last surrendered to that impulse that was as timeless, inevitable, and relentless as spring itself, and was the subject of all the songs the men were singing in the town below.”
When I first read the this book some years ago, I bought as many copies as I could afford and gave them to friends whom I believed would be moved by it as I was.
Trent
