In Love in Lowercase, Samuel lives a quiet life based on routine. He’s a loner in every sense of the word: His family interactions are perfunctory, not pleasant. A professor, he teaches about great stories and tortured characters, but his own life is quite shallow and plotless—until a cat wanders through the front door of his Barcelona apartment and changes his life, inviting in love, friendship and even a little bit of adventure.
Inspired by his new cat, Samuel begins to reach beyond his comfort zone. He cultivates friendships with a vet, a neighbor and people he meets at a bar. Of course, a book with “love” in the title wouldn’t be complete without romance, and when Samuel meets a beautiful, mysterious woman named Gabriela, we get to see if his decision to re-engage with his life pays off romantically as well as platonically.
Samuel attributes his new relationship success to following signs, to the butterfly effect, to magic and happenstance. But Spanish author Francesc Miralles seems to be showing us that Samuel’s decision to take the opportunities life’s been handing him all along is what really creates his relationship changes.
The title of Love in Lowercase refers to the power of small actions. Miralles has given us a lovely little book with nods to literature, philosophy and music that encourages us to wake up to our lives and to the people in them, and to let small coincidences lead us to love.
This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
