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Ten Things I've Learnt About Love
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Description
Alice is back in the family house that has never felt like home, waiting out the last few days of her father's life and yearning to escape. Across the city, a homeless man named Daniel searches for the daughter he has always loved but never met.
Connected by a secret, Alice and Daniel are about to cross paths in unexpected and life-changing ways . . .
Alice has just returned to London from months of travelling abroad. She is late to hear the news that her father is dying, and arrives at the family home only just in time to say goodbye. Daniel hasn't had a roof over his head for years, but to him the city of London feels like home in a way that no bricks and mortar ever did. He spends every day searching for his daughter; the daughter he has never met. Until now . . . Heart-wrenching and life-affirming, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love is a unique story of love lost and found, of rootlessness and homecoming and the power of the ties that bind. It is a story for fathers and daughters everywhere from debut novelist, Sarah Butler.
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Connected by a secret, Alice and Daniel are about to cross paths in unexpected and life-changing ways . . .
Alice has just returned to London from months of travelling abroad. She is late to hear the news that her father is dying, and arrives at the family home only just in time to say goodbye. Daniel hasn't had a roof over his head for years, but to him the city of London feels like home in a way that no bricks and mortar ever did. He spends every day searching for his daughter; the daughter he has never met. Until now . . . Heart-wrenching and life-affirming, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love is a unique story of love lost and found, of rootlessness and homecoming and the power of the ties that bind. It is a story for fathers and daughters everywhere from debut novelist, Sarah Butler.
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Product details
- Paperback | 288 pages
- 127 x 203 x 17mm | 318g
- 30 Jan 2014
- Pan Macmillan
- PICADOR
- London, United Kingdom
- English
- 1447222504
- 9781447222507
- 152,943
Review quote
'A very enjoyable read . . . subtle and clever' Clare Morrall, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Astonishing Splashes of Colour 'A hymn to London - poetic and incantatory. The gripping, hopeful love story is deftly threaded through wonderfully detailed, sensuous prose'. Martina Evans 'Sarah Butler writes a very real London, linking paths through the city with a moving, eloquent story of love, loss and family'
Stella Duffy 'Heartbreaking and hopeful, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love criss-crosses London in a search for fathers and daughters, family and home. For anyone who has ever wondered where they belong, or to whom they belong, the answer can be found within Sarah Butler's tender debut novel' Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of The Language of Flowers 'A tender and imaginative novel about love, belonging and the ties that bind, this is a beautifully written book that shows the reader contemporary London through the eyes of two people on personal journeys.'Choice magazine 'If this weren't billed as a debut novel, one would never know it. Sarah Butler writes with the deftness and delicacy of a master storyteller, giving us a compassionate, achingly beautiful rendering of a father and daughter.' Hillary Jordan, author of Mudbound and When She Woke 'Graceful and subtle... love, in all its shape-shifting complexity, is at the core of this novel; that and the consequences - good and bad - of keeping secrets... The shifting and intricate dynamics of family life, and the vertiginously painful feelings of loss induced by relationship breakdown and bereavement, are written with imaginative precision. This is a thought- as well as emotion-provoking novel... It also sparkles with hope.' Independent on Sunday 'Increasingly suspenseful... a moving and satisfying debut' John Harding, Daily Mail 'A warm-hearted, hopeful fable about trying to stay true to yourself: about losing parents, building bridges and seeing miracles in the dust on the pavement' Maggie Gee 'This poignant novel about fathers and daughters, homecoming and restlessness, is also a love letter to London... Butler has viewed the city in all its weathers and moods, and this shines through on every page. Equally elegant are her observations of the emotional turmoil of her main characters as they pace the capital's highways and byways, united by a secret... A moving, life-affirming debut.'Marie Claire 'In a novel flitting between the perspectives of young Alice and homeless older gentleman Daniel, Butler gives an astute insight into both their worlds.' The Big Issue 'Explores the bonds and fractures between fathers and daughters... This is a novel strong in both style and substance that tells a poignant tale of hope and love regained' We Love This Book 'Exquisitely written... Butler writes with lucidity, compassion and a beautifully detailed eye for London and all its quirks' Metro
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Stella Duffy 'Heartbreaking and hopeful, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love criss-crosses London in a search for fathers and daughters, family and home. For anyone who has ever wondered where they belong, or to whom they belong, the answer can be found within Sarah Butler's tender debut novel' Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of The Language of Flowers 'A tender and imaginative novel about love, belonging and the ties that bind, this is a beautifully written book that shows the reader contemporary London through the eyes of two people on personal journeys.'Choice magazine 'If this weren't billed as a debut novel, one would never know it. Sarah Butler writes with the deftness and delicacy of a master storyteller, giving us a compassionate, achingly beautiful rendering of a father and daughter.' Hillary Jordan, author of Mudbound and When She Woke 'Graceful and subtle... love, in all its shape-shifting complexity, is at the core of this novel; that and the consequences - good and bad - of keeping secrets... The shifting and intricate dynamics of family life, and the vertiginously painful feelings of loss induced by relationship breakdown and bereavement, are written with imaginative precision. This is a thought- as well as emotion-provoking novel... It also sparkles with hope.' Independent on Sunday 'Increasingly suspenseful... a moving and satisfying debut' John Harding, Daily Mail 'A warm-hearted, hopeful fable about trying to stay true to yourself: about losing parents, building bridges and seeing miracles in the dust on the pavement' Maggie Gee 'This poignant novel about fathers and daughters, homecoming and restlessness, is also a love letter to London... Butler has viewed the city in all its weathers and moods, and this shines through on every page. Equally elegant are her observations of the emotional turmoil of her main characters as they pace the capital's highways and byways, united by a secret... A moving, life-affirming debut.'Marie Claire 'In a novel flitting between the perspectives of young Alice and homeless older gentleman Daniel, Butler gives an astute insight into both their worlds.' The Big Issue 'Explores the bonds and fractures between fathers and daughters... This is a novel strong in both style and substance that tells a poignant tale of hope and love regained' We Love This Book 'Exquisitely written... Butler writes with lucidity, compassion and a beautifully detailed eye for London and all its quirks' Metro
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About Sarah Butler
Sarah Butler is in her early thirties and lives in Manchester. She runs a consultancy which develops literature and arts projects that explore and question our relationship to place. She has been writer in residence on the Central Line, the Greenwich Peninsula, and at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and has taught creative writing for the British Council in Kuala Lumpur. Ten Things I've Learnt About Love is her first novel, and has been published in thirteen languages around the world.
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Our customer reviews
Every chapter in this book starts with a list of ten things. I liked that, the lists had purpose. They are either from Alice or from Daniel, as the chapters alternate between them. Alice doesn't feel like a full member of her family. She doesn't feel completely loved by her father and there's a distance between her and her sisters. When she was young they sometimes told her things out of spite and Alice is feeling guilty because of reasons she can't comprehend. Daniel has been searching for his daughter for many years. He's homeless and keeps looking for her every day. Then he suddenly knows where she is. Both Alice and Daniel are sad, they don't feel like they belong, they miss something in their life. It's a sad story, but somehow it doesn't feel only sad, there's a great sense of hope.
I liked the fact that Daniel was homeless and that Alice didn't have a place of her own to stay because she was roaming around the world. You get to know the main characters really well. I loved the writing style and the way the description of small things was made into something important. The dead mother's always at the center of things, but we don't really get to know her, that was also a plus for me. Because of the wandering you picture London from a different point of view, which makes this story stand out in relation to other London based stories. Ten Things I've Learnt About Love doesn't disappoint, I think it's great.show more
by Librarian Lavender
