Butterflies in November
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A novel of love, friendship, and self-reinvention: "I can't remember the last time I was so enchanted . . . zany, surprising, full of twists and turns" (Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle and Something Blue).
A translator of Icelandic, the unnamed young woman who narrates Butterflies in November is perhaps more at home in the world of language than the actual world. After a day of being dumped—twice—and accidentally killing a goose, she yearns to escape from the chaos of her life. Instead, her best friend's four-year-old deaf-mute son is unexpectedly left in her care. But when the boy chooses the winning numbers for a lottery ticket, the two set off from Reykjavik along Iceland's Ring Road on a journey of discovery.
Along the way, they encounter black sand beaches, cucumber farms, lava fields, flocks of sheep, an Estonian choir, a falconer, a hitchhiker, and both of her exes desperate for another chance. What begins as a spontaneous adventure will unexpectedly and profoundly change the way she views her past and charts her future.
Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.</
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"One of the things that characterizes a bad relationship is when people start feeling an obligation to have a child together." So says the unnamed narrator of lafsd tti's (The Greenhouse) novel, a woman dumped twice in the same day: first by her lover, because she will not commit to him, and then by her husband, because she will not commit to domestic life particularly the idea of having children. Luck answers her call for change when she wins the lottery. However, as soon as she plans an isolated vacation in a faraway bungalow, she ends up accepting temporary responsibility for her friend's child, a four-year-old deaf-mute boy. She and the boy set off on a road trip through Iceland where they kill various animals; pass by a lava field, a cucumber farm, and a Wild West motel; and cross paths with a cow portraitist, an ex-lover, and, maybe, a future lover. lafsd tti's novel is outlandish, yet the protagonist's conviction is plausible enough for the circumstances to feel authentic. The story explores what freedom really means when romantic and familial bonds are pushed aside.
