Four New Words For Love by Michael Cannon

"Things don't cost what you give for them, they cost what you give up to get them." So says Gina, an intelligent and resourceful young Glaswegian, who has pulled herself away from a pair of alcoholic parents to make something of her life as an independent single mother. She's the first voice we hear in this emotionally compelling novel of platonic love and friendship across generations and class; indeed, she remains the core of the novel, even when we shift from her effective first person narrative to the more distancing, and far less engaging, authorial third person story of Christopher, a suburban London pensioner who has unexpectedly outlived his wife in a loveless, constrained marriage and is now learning to live and love again. Both Gina and Christopher have been damaged by the constraints on their lives, but Michael Cannon is brave enough not to suggest that two wrongs can easily make a right; Christopher, out of ignorance of the facts, makes several mistakes, not least his attempt to engineer a reconciliation between Gina and her mother. But they are both good-hearted people, and that is the link that binds them, despite having grown up in very different worlds. [Paul Cockburn]