This book is going to stick with me for a while. It's not always easy to read. A story of people struggling with the past and the future. Who can't relate to that?!

This subtle debut novel has a central theme of love and loss within relationships and it's told from the point of view of two characters, Alice and Daniel.

Alice, a wanderer, a backpacker, returns from Mongolia to spend time with her father who is dying of cancer. Her older sisters, Tilly and Cee, are also in the house, and instantly the sibling's dynamics start up again. Tilly is sympathetic and warm towards Alice and bakes when stressed, while Cee, a compulsive list-maker, criticizes and nags her. Alice has always sensed that their father has shared a secret with her sisters that she doesn't know about, felt a twinge of exclusion, but also a sense of being protected from that secret. Their mother died when Alice was young, when picking Alice up from her ballet lessons, an event about which Alice has carried guilt for many years. She still yearns for her ex-boyfriend with whom she broke up because he wouldn't tell his parents about her.

Daniel is a homeless man, a vagrant who searches London for the daughter he has never met, the result of a year-long affair with a married woman. He sees colors in letters and numbers and creates artistic messages out of discarded junk which he leaves on street corners and fences for his daughter. Every year he makes a birthday card for her and posts it, fantasizing that she’ll receive it.

Both characters are compulsive list-makers, always of ten items, this device allows for information to be conveyed to the reader in a quick, easy way, although I sometimes felt it disrupted the flow of the narrative. The outcome is fairly obvious, but the book never descends into sentimentality and concludes in an open-ended fashion that remains open to interpretation by the reader.



10 THINGS I LEARNT ABOUT READING WHILE READING TEN THINGS I’VE LEARNT ABOUT LOVE BY SARAH BUTLER



1. I love reading, more for what I can take away from the book than the actual experience.
2. I'll give this book to every reader I know.
3. If I wrote a book, it would have to be like this one.
4. I want a finished copy of this book.
5. Sarah Butler should write something else. I want more.
6. Alice is the most self deprecating character I know.
7. I wouldn't have stayed like Alice did.
8. Daniel needs a bath. I could smell him off the pages.
9. I am grateful for my Dad and I love him.
10. I'll read this again next year.

4.5 stars. While the title makes you think it's a boy-meets-girl kind of love story, it's really a beautiful, poetic story about the love of family and what home really is. The language of this book is stunning, and it's the kind of book you read slowly and savor every word. I loved both Alice and Daniel, and while I wish the book had been a little longer, the ending was exactly right.

Sarah Butler's story captures the difficulties in defining family. The connection between the two main characters was clear from the beginning...but Sarah Butler made both Alice and Daniel very believable and sympathetic characters. I was pleased that the ending was as ambiguous as the word "family".

A quiet book. One of those that leads you along by the arm, you're a little uncomfortable because you don't know where you are headed, but once you get there, it was well worth it. Butler captures Alice's restlessness, her rootlessness perfectly. You wonder as the book goes on how much is nature, how much nurture. And as much as Alice feels she is not a part of her family, deep down she is tied to them ore than she'd like to admit. When you watch her struggle with her relationship with Kal, you realize she does want roots, real roots, relationships that she can name. That she chooses not to want to name her relationship with Daniel, is telling, As much as she has felt out of place in her life, it is her life. Daniel helps her to see that, I think. Really a lovely book.

I loved this tale - again it subverted my expectations - I was expecting a romantic love story - however, this was much more powerful. It tells instead the stories of family ties and familial love, as well love between two people in difficult circumstances. Its told through the eyes of two main characters, which I also enjoyed as a style - it divided the book up very clearly and the two perspectives often crossed over in interesting ways. I loved the inclusion of lists throuhgout. Overall, I think what I fell in love with first was the writing - so well written, lyrical, beautiful. A tale for all time.

Nicely written. Stir emotions.

I love the way Ms. Butler describes the places, the people and even the smallest things so beautifully. And naturally how Alice's thoughts jump from one thing to another. Quite a 'fleeting' creature.

Definitely this does not belong under chick-lit category. It has a darker tone.