Book Tamers| book reviews

So Many Ways to Begin is first and foremost a novel about a simple story, about a life like any other, but through the charm and attention of Jon McGregor it becomes a life of historic importance.

A dense novel, minutely built up, So Many Ways to Begin makes use of many starting points, stories that resemble threads which interweave to create the complex story of a simple man, David Carter.

 

The interesting construction technique

If one can’t find out the reason for the way the novel begins, one’s reading can be hardened and transformed into a tiring and discouraging one by the abundance of short chapters without apparent connection. But as the story develops, three main ideas stand out: David’s marriage to Eleanor, Eleanor’s childhood and David’s wish to shed light upon his past.

McGregor’s narrator is omniscient, although the narrative sometimes bounces between first and third person. However, the humanization of the narrator is achieved through the empathy and heart warmth showed towards the characters.

This aspect is also sustained by the new manner of involving dialogue in the text, by which McGregror manages to sweep away the barrier between words and feelings.

 

Life built up out of details

…hand-written letters, a cigarette-holder, a child’s gloves, a napkin, a salary note or a “metal, rusty biscuit-box, used as a piggy bank or to keep souvenirs” are the small things which we often miss, ignore and easily push away.

It is these little things that David has an interest in, these “meaningless things” help him discover the pleasure of life and through them he tries to bring out the past which keeps him prisoner. With the help of David we understand why nothing is meaningless, how every thing keeps memories and the force of the past which it represents, how life doesn’t need to be grandiose in order to be beautiful.

 

The mother as the eternal disappointment

McGregor’s novel abounds in mothers: young, old, with one child, more or none, loving, distant or violent. But none of them manages to have a healthy relationship with her child, to show or to prove her love; they all end up pushed away from the child’s life. From the exhausted and violent mother to the loving but incapable of understanding, to the one who would give her child anything but cannot give him birth or to the absent mother, without substance, maternity remains a failure in McGregor’s eyes.

 

The curse of the blood

David is the adult who finds out that his whole life has been built upon a false foundation. The truth propels him in a never-ending search and investigation of the past, but leaves him with the disillusion of having only what he has built up in the present, with the past being impenetrable.

So Many Ways to Begin has a devastating force, achieved through the simplicity and clarity of the style. The characters are molded attentively and with patience, the feelings are real and the implications have echo in the soul of every reader.

 

Written by Ama