Book Review: Nothing Else is Love
Nothing Else is Love. Gina Linko. Touchpoint Press, October 12, 2021, eBook, 407 pages.
Review by Sierra Kay.
Nothing Else is Love is a novel about Alice Grier’s journey to self-discovery. While many books are journeys about self-discovery, this one is slightly different because Alice has memories, skills, and experiences that seeming came from nowhere.
Since childhood, Alice has been able to speak flawless French, play the piano, and mix perfume—all abilities she has retained from memories of a past life she refers to as the before.
In 1998 when Alice turns twenty-five, she joins a graduate project researching the history of St. Paul to dive deeper into learning more about the before and the feelings and memories floating just beneath the surface.
Her investigation leads to discovering a love story of two immigrants who lived in Swede Hollow in St. Paul in the 1920s, one of those being Rune Folkeson. He was a Swedish immigrant who came to America to reunite his family (mother and two brothers) with their father. It also led Alice to learn that the life and emotions she experiences in the memories of the before are those of French immigrant Catarin Guillet, an immigrant from France, whose life and emotions she’s experiencing in the memories of the before.
I typically shy away from any books that deal with people that have left our plane of existence and have elected, for whatever reason, not to walk to the light. Upon reading the synopsis, I didn’t think that magical realism was a genre I’d enjoy. I wasn’t even convinced after the first page. The whole concept of the before gave me pause.
However, I’m glad I pressed on. The parts of the story that detailed Alice’s before were
the parts that drew me the most. I fell in love with Rune and Catarin’s story. Those are the characters in the book that you reread because they evoke an emotion that you want to relive.
All of the characters have robust backstories. The impact of the events and times of the 1920s on the story and the characters is well-represented. And the author skillfully navigates the complexity of familial relationships throughout the book.
Nothing Else is Love—Author Alice Linko’s first entry into the adult category—is a novel worth reading. The skillful narrative mixed with great characters and thought-provoking storylines keeps the reader engaged. Although it does have elements of literary fiction and magical realism, I see it as a romance novel—or, in Linko’s terms, “a love letter to her Swedish ancestors.” At its core, it’s about love—siblings, parental, romantic love. I applaud Gina Linko’s Nothing Else is Love.