The framework of her story is made of lists of ten things. Each chapter opens with the ten point list that is pertinent to the material covered in the chapter, with chapter narrators alternating between two characters. Their words and actions then become the walls and floors of her novel, following the blueprint of how to construct a novel.
The story opens with a daughter returning home for her father's last days. There is nothing like a funeral, or a wedding, or something similar, to bring characters together. Authors use the trick often, because why else would an estranged daughter bother to return to her dying father's side? You have to write that which a reader can believe, and so authors rely on the usual excuses.
Alice comes back to confront her father who she thinks did not love her. After a couple of pages, we leave her to look at the other side of the novel's structure, and find that the first person POV narrative is coming from someone else. Confusing, yes. To sort us readers out, Ms. Butler opens Daniel's chapter with a clarifying statement, in which he says he is an old man. That can't be Alice, who we know is female. And not so old as all that.
Beam by beam, the novel is built as Alice and Daniel work on their sections. He is clearly mentally ill, a homeless man. Alice is clearly following the usual pattern of family outcast who does not get along with her sisters. You'll keep reading to find out how these two are connected, because they must be. They are building the same novel, and at some point, their stories must merge.
Daddy dies, the funeral is held, and the sections built by Daniel and Alice are as close as a connecting beam. Then the beam is put into place and you'd be hard-pressed to know which character is telling the story at that point because it's been first person all along and suddenly those two first persons are both together but which one is narrating.
The connection between the two proves to be Alice's mother. It's a dicey connection at best. There is no sense in it, unless you the reader can suspend disbelief enough to accept that a doctor's wife would just pick up some loser hanging around an art gallery and commence an affair.
So the beam is warped and can't hold its own weight, but it serves as a bridge. Alice and Daniel finish the novel around it, in part because the beam's flaws are not communicated between the two characters. What Daniel knows he does not reveal, although the reader has probably seen that beam hanging over the novel from page 12. What is it? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out.
TEN THINGS I'VE LEARNT ABOUT LOVE is eminently skimmable, a quick read that doesn't demand your full attention. Ms. Butler explains that she wrote it in part as an ode to London, a city she loves, but names of streets and places seem to get in the way. Unless you plan to visit London, or wish to reconnect with happy memories of an old vacation, you can skip the travelogue parts and move along.
The novel doesn't break new ground in storytelling. It's all about the device of the lists at the start of each chapter, of alternating narrators. It's a happy ending as well, when the novel is fully built and then topped off. It is a short and pleasant diversion, a beach read kind of book with more appeal to those who like their heartstrings tugged than those who like a good thriller to amuse them.
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