Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

In her plotting of this likeable novel, the writer uses the conventions of romantic fiction as the girders of her story’s edifice. The protagonist Hailey, at the point of leaving small-town for the big city and a promising, interesting career, is smitten with a former schoolmate Christian, whose intense good looks suggest a well-meaning, sensitive nature. In the four weeks before Hailey’s departure the feelings deepen on both sides – as the question of the continuance of the relationship looms large.

The title, Butterflies, is used to signify the intense feeling that Hailey experiences at the mention of her lover. Norton’s writing here is rich and many-coloured, and would enjoin the New Adult readership to the anxiety and excitement of this conflicted situation. For me, the interest lay more in the brickwork of the structure, in the deliberate detailing of clothes, food and entertainment – an appreciation of contemporary western culture and its abundance. As an unvarying Americano drinker, I was educated as to coffee and the range available, though nothing will induce me to take pizza seriously. The deeper question was of character. In Hailey, Norton has created a familiar and relatable figure, sophisticated in her communication, full of ready self-deprecating humour, on terms of absolute disclosure with her single-parent mom, safe and secure in other words, until the larger element, love, comes into her life. For me, the further question, ‘love for whom?’ caused me to give hours to the novel. This Christian Cooper – was he going to turn out to be worth it?

I have been listening to the Italian composer Donizetti. L’elesir d’amore conveys the agony of love and the heights which it would attain. As I read, something of this writing echoed this nobility of feeling that Pavarotti sings of in ‘Una furtiva lagrima’. Initially Norton’s purpose is to share the sensations with the reader; eventually it will be to make an enquiry into what it all means.