From Publishers Weekly
Livesey's lovely fifth novel tells the story of Zeke, a 29-year-old London housepainter with "the face of a Raphael angel" and an autism-like difficulty relating to other people, and Verona, who shows up at a house Zeke is working on, very pregnant and claiming to be the owners' niece. After they spend a night together, Verona disappears, leaving a pair of painter's coveralls nailed to the floor. Neither can forget the other. As Zeke goes on a hunt for the mysterious Verona, she calls him—from Boston, where she has, in a slightly far-fetched turn of events, gone to hunt down her blithely amoral brother, Henry, to convince him to repay his creditors, who have begun threatening her. Zeke heeds her instructions to meet her there, only to spend days alone in a hotel room as she contacts him from New York and then from London, when, Henry's financial matters settled, she abruptly goes home. Devastated, he returns to London, ignores her calls (even burying his answering machine to fully banish her), but finally gives in to the powerful connection he felt the moment he met her. The off-kilter chronology of their alternating stories works well, and both Zeke and Verona have just enough quirks to be endearing without being implausible; the supporting characters are similarly well realized. As Livesey (
Eva Moves the Furniture) gently probes the depths of longing, betrayal and forgiveness, her gift for creating sublimely unexpected sentences is abundantly on display: Zeke's "emotions were swirling and scattering like leaves in a playground on a windy day; he glimpsed joy, rage, hope, amazement, jealousy, frustration and exaltation flashing by." "You're the opposite of Narcissus," an old girlfriend of Zeke's tells him. Moments like these are ghosts that dance in the reader's vision long after the photographer's flashbulb has popped.
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From Booklist
Single and seven months pregnant, Verona quickly falls in love with Zeke and just as quickly leaves him in the lurch. She's off on a wild goose chase after her ne'er-do-well brother, Henry, who has managed to anger a couple of thugs who decide the best way of getting to Henry is through Verona, which is how she meets Zeke. And Zeke is no run-of-the-mill suitor, either. Suffering from myriad phobias, he likes his world neat and orderly and danger-free, and falling in love with Verona wasn't something he planned on. Yet while Verona chases Henry from London to Boston to New York and back again, Zeke is two steps behind her, pursuing but never catching his elusive ladylove. Zeke willingly turns his world upside down for a woman he hardly knows; he just knows he can't live without her, and if that isn't the definition of true love, then what is? Told from the parallel viewpoints of her wistful hero and his winsome heroine, Livesey's unlikely yet enchanting romance poignantly reveals the mysterious machinations of the human heart.
Carol HaggasCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
