TEN THINGS I’VE
LEARNT ABOUT LOVE Butler, Sarah
Penguin Press (320 pp.)
$26.95 | Jul. 15, 2013
978-1-59420-533-0
This soulful debut unpacks a family
enigma involving a wandering daughter, a
homeless father and their tenuous family
ties.
The title might promise another
light romantic romp about a footloose young woman in
her late
20s. However, English newcomer Butler has greater
gravitas in
mind. The top 10 lists strewn throughout point to
increasingly
somber subjects: a mother’s early death, infidelity, a
father’s
death from cancer, and elder sisters who are both
fervent and
ambivalent in their affection for their much younger
sibling,
protagonist Alice. Summoned home from Mongolia to the
bedside
of Malcolm, her dying father, Alice is also forced to
revisit
London, the site of a traumatic rupture with her
Indian lover,
Kal, whose family wants to arrange a marriage for him.
After
Malcolm’s passing, sisters Tilly and Cee hint at what
Alice has
suspected since her mother’s death when she was 4
years old:
She is viewed as an interloper in the only family she
has ever
known. Meanwhile, in alternating sections, Daniel, a
homeless
man, scours London for the daughter he fathered during
a longago
affair but has never met. Daniel’s plight stems both
from
the disastrous legacy of his gambler father and from
an auto
accident that bankrupted him. All he knows is that the
woman
he is searching for might have red hair, like her
mother, and is
named Alice. Delicately, through the accretion of
telling details,
the reader learns that Daniel’s Alice and our heroine
are one and
the same, but Alice thinks her father has just died.
When, while
helping another destitute man reconnect with his lost
child,
Daniel happens across Malcolm’s obituary, complete
with relatives’
names and the location of memorial services, he
realizes
his quest may soon be fulfilled if he has the courage
to gamble.
Improbably but convincingly, his initial diffident
overtures to
Alice take the form of mini art installations. Spare
language and
an atmosphere of foreboding will keep readers on
tenterhooks.
Whimsy and pathos, artfully melded.
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