Sarah Butler

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.