{"id":3591,"date":"2013-01-24T07:06:29","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T07:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3591"},"modified":"2013-01-25T07:35:01","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T07:35:01","slug":"ten-things-ive-learnt-about-love-by-sarah-butler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3591","title":{"rendered":"Ten Things I\u2019ve Learnt About Love by Sarah Butler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Picador 31 January 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

292pp, hardback, \u00a312.99<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lesley Glaister<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ten Things I\u2019ve Learnt About Love<\/em>, Sarah Butler\u2019s debut novel, has made quite a splash already, with rights sold in twelve languages and a big publishing deal in the USA, so I approached it with high expectations.\u00a0\u00a0 The blurb says that this novel is \u2018a story for daughters, fathers and lost lovers everywhere\u2019 and with its light-hearted title and quirky cover it looks as if it\u2019s going to fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Each chapter is headed by a list of Ten Things\u2026 ranging from Ten things I\u2019m frightened of<\/em>; Ten places I\u2019ve had sex<\/em>; Ten foods that stress me out<\/em> to Ten times I\u2019ve wanted to die<\/em>.\u00a0 This is a lovely and involving, almost addictive, device. I found myself really drawn in while reading some of these lists, and mentally compiling my own. The lists have another function too, as mini stories in their own right, as they move between the general e.g. in Ten things you shouldn\u2019t do<\/em>: \u20181. Stalk your ex-boyfriend on Facebook,\u2019 to the much more particular \u201810: Steal a picture of your own mother.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story revolves around Alice, a restless soul, youngest of three sisters, who returns to England from her travels in Mongolia for the death of her step-father; and Daniel \u2013 a middle-aged down and out who is in search of her.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s structured in alternating chapters with Alice and Daniel as the narrators. And this is where I ran into problems with this novel.\u00a0 Both narrations are done, for the most part, in the first person present tense, and the two voices and the kinds of observations they make are almost identical. It seems a real waste of an opportunity to be giving us two such similar voices and consciousnesses.\u00a0 Daniel sounds so feminine in his observations that I was simply unable to believe in him: \u2018She looks like someone who diets \u2013 her face is slightly drawn and there\u2019s an edge of discontent about her.\u2019\u00a0 \u2018When I was a kid and all those bees died in our garden, with their soft black-and orange fur and their delicate wings.\u2019\u00a0 He just doesn\u2019t sound like a middle-aged down-and-out to me; his observations and manner of expression are too feminine, too literary, and his terms of reference too similar to Alice\u2019s. This homogeneity is compounded by the fact that it\u2019s not only the Alice chapters than begin with lists of ten things, Daniel\u2019s do too, and I found this just too much. It makes the device, so fresh and delightful at first, begin to seem artificial and even at times, laboured.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Daniel chapters are also rather slow, so that while there\u2019s some rise and fall of tension in Alice\u2019s strand of the story, Daniel\u2019s becomes rather monotonous.\u00a0 He is synesthetic, seeing colour when he hears words. This is intrinsically interesting, and beautifully described, but there\u2019s too much of it. He spends the entire novel collecting little gatherings of objects to spell out his daughter\u2019s name and leave as offerings for her to find. Again, this is a lovely idea but quickly becomes repetitive when in almost every one of his chapters he does so.\u00a0 I soon found myself skimming these sections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite these objections I really enjoyed Butler\u2019s crisp prose style, her brilliant observations and finely selected detail.\u00a0 In her acknowledgements Butler says that the novel is in part a love letter to London, and the city with its atmospheres ranging from grand to squalid is evoked beautifully, especially in the long walks which both Alice, and Daniel take separately and finally together. These are described in such detail that you could follow their routes on a map or on Google if you so desired.<\/p>\n

In the end, this was not the novel I thought it was going to be, or I think, that it is packaged to be.\u00a0 It\u2019s not as quirky or as much fun as it looks.\u00a0 However, Sarah Butler writes beautifully and there is much to admire in this novel, which is amazingly atmospheric, a tender, thoughtful melancholy read, and rather moving in its final chapters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Lesley Glaister<\/p>\n

The story revolves around Alice, a restless soul, youngest of three sisters, who returns to England from her travels in Mongolia for the death of her step-father; and Daniel \u2013 a middle-aged down and out who is in search of her. It\u2019s structured in alternating chapters with Alice and Daniel as the narrators. And this is where I ran into problems with this novel […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3597,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions\/3597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}