About to turn thirty, Alice is the youngest of three daughters and the black sheep of her family. Drawn to traveling in far-flung and often dangerous countries, she has never enjoyed the closeness with her father that her two older sisters have and has eschewed their more conventional career paths. She has left behind a failed relationship in London with the man she thought she might marry and is late to hear the news that her father is dying. She returns to the family home only just in time to say good-bye.
Daniel is called many things—"tramp," "bum," "lost." He hasn't had a roof over his head for almost thirty years, but he once had a steady job and a passionate love affair with a woman he's never forgotten. To him, the city of London has come to be like home in a way that no bricks-and-mortar dwelling ever was. He makes sculptures out of the objects he finds on his walks throughout the city—bits of string and scraps of paper, a child's hair tie, and a lost earring—and experiences synesthesia, a neurological condition that causes him to see words and individual letters of the alphabet as colors. But as he approaches his sixties his health is faltering, and he is kept alive by the knowledge of one thing—that he has a daughter somewhere in the world whom he has never been able to find.
A searching and inventive debut, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love is a story about finding love in unexpected places, about rootlessness and homecoming, and the power of the ties that bind. It announces Sarah Butler as a major new talent for telling stories that are heart-wrenching, page-turning, and unforgettable.
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“Butler’s lists have a surprising emotional
resonance. They represent her two narrators’ anguished and perhaps futile
efforts to organize the sad and turbulent parts of life in an intrinsically
chaotic city called London, circa right about now. And they are only the
surface layer of a carefully structured story that invites and even requires
puzzle-solving. This is a novel deeply committed to unfinishedness—the
characters speak in sentences that trail off, plot points are left to be
guessed at or pieced together. As a literary technique, the elliptical style is
enormously effective, keeping the narrative in a constant, trembling state of
tension, which gives the lists a grounding effect. This and the charming,
gritty, and appropriately damp view of London nearly devoid of any Cool
Britiannia elements make for a novel that often evokes strong feeling…There are
a few things in this book that frustrate, but there are many more than ten to
love.”
—
New York Times Book Review