3.5 rounding to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. This book took me ages to read and is not really my style but still the writing was beautiful and the magic realism was… magical. The first half is slow and not nearly as good as the last. This was written in the 90s and there are bits that didn’t age well.

Beautifully written, bittersweet story.

Williams made me realize how much Brian Doyle (a favorite American author) is in the same tradition as Irish writing - complex descriptions, strong connection to land and place, illuminating the mystical found in the mundane of everyday life.

3.5 The build up to Gabriella and Stephen meeting was torturous. That being said, I love how Williams turns a phrase, most often in surprising ways supplanting positive images with unpredictable misfortune. And often the opposite when the gloom is cleared by the sun or some sort of epiphany. I found all the characters sympathetic and I cared for them throughout to the conclusion.

Ei hassumpi rakkauskertomus. Vaikken musiikista ja shakista ymmärrä yhtään mitään, jaksoi tarina silti kantaa.

How to describe Niall Williams's heavenly voice and point of view? I think the only way to do it is to present it as one: the voice and point of view are identical and they come from a place that transcends but is also intimate with everyday human life.

As It Is in Heaven is my third Williams book, and I've read this voice, as well as many of the same characters, in parts of his other books, but in this book, the entire story is told in this angelic, romantic, melancholic moan. Communication happens without words—through a father and son’s chess game, through music, through a gesture. And, for me, it is more real than mundane words or reality, so I hesitate to call it mystical. This point of view sees and describes everything in utterly original and beautiful language. What’s ugly is stunning. Williams’s voice whispers a matrix of connecting energy between all people and conveys the movements of events as the result of this energy. And some characters in this book see and understand life from this point of view, and to have this told is breathtaking. Or breath-starting. Or just breath.

Bored. Very slow moving.

Okay, so I don't really remember this book all that well. But I do know I read it. I LOVE William's Four Letters of Love, but distinctly remember not liking this one as much.

Just what the doctor ordered: a beautiful, mystical story of love, loss, redemption and rebirth- complete with the dreamy atmospheres of Venice and the West of Ireland. And much to my heart's relief- a happy ending. Or rather, a beginning filled with hope and joy.

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I started this last week and stopped because the opening pages were too filled with grief and loss- more than I could stand at the present moment.

But I picked it up again last night, after abandoning another Irish-set horror-mystery book that left me feeling really icky.

It was like sinking into the soft embrace of a favorite arm chair set in the middle of a green meadow: soothing, invigorating, life-affirming, charming, safe. Williams writes prose like poetry with such affection for and joy in his characters and his settings.

Knowing the author, there is no guarantee of a happy ending, but there is certain to be a fair amount of mysticism and legend that is so quintessentially Irish. And love- Williams is a master of the love story.