A fine romance

Banishing Verona
By Margot Livesey
Holt, 321 pp., $24

Zeke Cafarelli and Verona McIntyre are two Londoners who are definitely not in the market for love. Zeke, a 29-year-old angelically beautiful house painter, leads a circumscribed existence that keeps him insulated from the unpredictable world. Zeke is trusting, honest, resists change, and takes people at their word, quite literally. He also collects clocks, finds comfort in counting, and prefers tasks like home improvement, where he can indulge his compulsion for aesthetic perfection and desire for solitude, to the social demands of working at his parents' produce market. Zeke isn't an earnest, introverted misfit. He has Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that hinders his ability to recognize others' emotions through their facial expressions, body language, and vocal inflection. It also makes it nearly impossible for him to lie.

Verona is much more adventurous, at times reluctantly so. A cynical, boisterous, modestly successful radio talk show host, she is often cleaning up after her deceitful younger brother, Henry, who has a penchant for fleecing everyone with whom he comes in contact. If only romance would make up for it: Her most recent tryst ended in heartbreak, with a man who misrepresented the state of his marriage. At 37, she's single, hugely pregnant (not by the ex-boyfriend), and being pursued by two thuggish men who want to collect on Henry's enormous debt.

Zeke meets Verona at the Barrows' house, where he is working on a job while the owners are away in Latvia. Zeke has been replacing light bulbs all afternoon, because each one explodes as soon as he turns on the switch. As the fifth bulb bursts, so does Zeke's bubble, which coincides with Verona's arrival at the Barrows' front door. His carefully mediated world is about to change irrevocably. She misrepresents herself as the owners' niece because she is seeking sanctuary from the two money collectors. They talk endlessly. She draws him out, asking him questions and really listening, which has a profound effect on Zeke because before her, few others ever have.

Zeke tries to follow her lead by asking her questions. ''At last she spoke about herself but almost, Zeke noticed, as if she were talking about another person. Well, that was something he understood. He often felt as if the events in his life, the things people claimed he'd said and done, were really part of a stranger's story." The morning after their lovemaking, Verona disappears, but not before scrawling a brief note of thanks with a promise to call soon, accidentally leaving behind her grandfather's journal and, strangest of all, nailing the coveralls she wore the day before to the floor. ''Perhaps he would understand what she was trying to tell him: that what had happened here was as important as the events at any crime scene." But Verona doesn't realize that Zeke is ''no good at metaphors and subtexts and other people's problems." The mixed cue may be inevitable given their respective relationship to conventional language, but what is wholly unexpected is these two have fumbled upon a common language that they both understand: love. In Livesey's deft hands, their connection is as credible (and incredible) as love itself. .

With ''Banishing Verona," we as readers are asked to take a leap of faith much in the same way Zeke is by Verona, by believing in love at first sight between an unlikely pair. As ever, Livesey pulls it off effortlessly. The perspectives alternate between the two, chapter by chapter, so that we are privy to explanations neither Verona nor Zeke may ever have. After Verona's mysterious departure, the two try to find their way back to each other. But they suffer communication breakdowns and other mishaps that keep them from connecting. Once Zeke discovers Verona is not the Barrows' niece, he doesn't know how or where to begin to find her.

Verona recognizes that Zeke is a bit strange, but she doesn't realize that he naturally lacks intuition and takes most everything at face value. And each has a family crisis that threatens to wedge them further apart: After Verona leaves, Zeke's father suffers a heart attack, and his mother announces she wants to leave him for another man. This would leave Zeke the responsibilities of caring for his ailing, curmudgeonly father, and taking over the family store, prospects he finds unbearable. And the promise of seeing Verona again is enough to compel Zeke to (temporarily) abandon his family, face his fear of air travel, wait endlessly for her in a foreign country. All she has to do is ask him.We can appreciate the ill timing of their meeting. Love is rarely convenient. Verona's predicament with her brother sends her flying from London to Boston to New York. When she thinks she'll stay in Boston for a time, she summons Zeke, only to bounce from New York to Boston and back to London again, forced to leave a paper trail of terse notes. At least, that's how they appear to the lovelorn man who has dropped everything to be with her. Zeke eventually gives up when he returns to London, because he feels duped. We come to learn from Verona's passages that she is at a loss for words to describe the increasing complexity of her situation, and the urgency of her love for Zeke.

In each of Livesey's five novels, she puts family bonds and romantic love to the test, and we see it again in ''Banishing Verona," a beautiful novel that is, at its heart, about forgiveness. Verona's unconscionable brother, who has betrayed her in reprehensible ways, is ruining her chances to be with a man who has put his dire family matters on the back burner because he loves her. Zeke has held off his desperate parents because he found a woman who listened to him in a way they never did. Livesey has given us a wonderful character in Zeke, a person who has no choice but to be truthful. He may lack for intuition because of his disorder, but he gains insight about who he is by having enough faith in love to go headlong into it.

Kera Bolonik's reviews have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Nation, Bookforum, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. She serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and lives in New York City.