Magical realism glistens in 'Four Letters'

Everyone Says I Love You. All you need is love. Addicted to Love. Love me tender. She's So Lovely. I love you, always, forever. Love and Other Catastrophes. Where's the love? The Lover.

The Beatles, Hanson, Elvis Presley, Donna Lewis, Meg Ryan, John Travolta and countless others have all dealt with love, desire and romance. And especially this weekend, love is everywhere. You can't escape it.

With the constant bombardment of commercialized love, cynicism is a regular path. But even the most hardened person should not write it off as an economic principle capitalized upon by the Spice Girls and PST. At heart, we all hope to find some sort of romance.

Irish writer Niall Williams' novel Four Letters of Love (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23) fails to capture the fleeting, saccharin emotions that the Beatles exalted, and instead achieves something far superior. Williams explores the earthly drives and spirituality behind the many faces of love. This ethereal novel transcends the typical love plot and tackles life's bittersweet complexities. Here parental, fraternal, false and most importantly, true love determine the fate of individual lives.

Two main threads weave through this collage set in the timeless Irish countryside, albeit written in a strikingly modern narrative style. Using third and first person voices, the author cuts between two protagonists at different points in their lives who only meet at the tear-jerking conclusion.

Thanks to Williams' deftness, the nearly predictable plot is actually suspenseful. Williams introduces the primary narrator, Nicholas Coughlan at 12, when his father destroys their family's stability and causes his wife's suicide. Following God's calling, Mr. Couhlan adopts the mercurial life of an artist. Nicholas explains, "He told my father to be a painter, and left it at that."

This divine intervention strips Nicholas of his innocence and leads him on a series of transitions along with literal and emotional voyages that are dictated by his father's artistic drive.

The death of Mr. Coughlan leads his son on a journey to find his father's masterpiece that had been won in a poetry contest by the father of the novel's female protagonist, beautiful Isabel Gore. The tragedies and passions that shape Isabel's childhood parallel Nicholas'. In the defining moment of her character, Isabel's brother loses his musical abilities after a seizure, leaving her with a lifetime of guilt.

Like Nicholas, the young woman leaves home in search of the "exhilaration of freedom." She finds liberation in Peader O'Luing, a simple tailor. She loves him falsely, solely out of "defiance, daring and danger" and runs away with him to her parents' dismay.

While Isabel is away seeking adventure, Nicholas mystically heals Isabel's brother and falls in love with her after seeing her for the first time. Though Isabel's mother harshly intercepts the four love letters of the title that Nicholas sends Isabel, true love prevails. Nicholas never gives up, knowing that "everything happens for a reason."

Though Williams clearly focuses on his hero and heroine, they are barely together. This suggests their love is not simply about the two of them, but the parallel passions in their lives – their families, God and art. Determinism, Williams hopes, urges us towards happiness.

God is a tangible character who mysteriously motivates characters. Spirits nonchalantly wander the meadows to help their children make the right decisions and a certain unquestionable destiny makes everything turn out right. Regardless of its grand schemes of predestination, the novel is neither religious nor didactic. These divine forces have been brought down to an inoffensive scale.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Art, as the ultimate obedience to God's will and a type of personal prayer, is crucial in this magical world. Once inspired to create, the characters have no choice but to follow the advice. After the artist begins his quest, work is paramount even over love. Nicholas learns that "once you begin, nothing else matters, not love, not grief, not anything." The true protagonists of Four Letters of Love may not be Isabel or Nicholas, but art and God themselves.

At the same time, Williams' employment of magic and spirituality suggest that love is impossible in today's city life. It must happen on the sandy beaches of mythical Ireland, through the intervention of God and the passion of writing.

Still, Williams uses such romanticism to his advantage. His pitch-perfect prose and observant descriptions are quite effective. "There was in the air that moment a rare feeling of healing, of things lifting and coming together, of the story being carried suddenly forwards, the great whoosh on which everything suddenly rises and flows, and you know a great spirit somewhere is watching down."

Such radiant passages incite in the reader some sort of hope for the future, that life may take twisting turns, but it can sometimes lead towards contentment. In its fantastical splendor, Four Letters of Love transports the reader to a different world of seemingly lost emotions – ardor, endearment, persistence and bliss – all of which are wholly sincere.