Fabulous Fiction Firsts #581 “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi

Sun, 02/14/2016 - 12:58am by muffy

A bestseller in its native Spain, love in lowercase by Francesc Miralles (translated by Julie Wark) is a delightful romantic comedy in the tradition of The Rosie Project and The Solitude of Prime Numbers, where a series of surprising events lends a solitary bachelor a second chance at love.

New Year Eve. 37 year-old Samuel, a linguistics lecturer could hardly wait to turn in after observing the Twelve Grapes ritual alone in his Barcelona apartment. Accustomed to a routine of lesson-planning, housework, books, foreign films, classical jazz, and the thrill of an occasional trip to the supermarket, he would hardly believe that all that will change on New Year’s Day when a cat decides to take up residence in his home, and forces him to interact with the messy outside world.

The cat, which he named Mishima first sends him upstairs to meet Titus, a frail book editor who, in turn sends him on an errand where he crosses paths with Gabriela, his lost childhood love. Along the way Samuel learns the importance of what he terms "love in lowercase", a phenomenon in which “some small act of kindness sets off a chain of events that comes around again in the form of multiplied love” and inspires him to seek out Gabriela.

Listen to the Publishers Weekly's radio podcast as Francesc Miralles discusses his novel, also available in Spanish in our World Language Collection.