Synopses & Reviews
Now in paperback for the first time, So Many Ways to Begin is a potent examination of family and memory, a look at what happens when life forces you to let go of the person you might have been. David Carter is an obsessive collector, and the curator of the local history museum. In addition to overseeing the community's archives, he has, since boyhood, diligently archived the items that tell his own life story: birth certificate, school report cards, movie and train tickets. But when a senile relative lets slip a long-buried family secret, David is forced to consider that his whole carefully cataloged life may be constructed around a lie. In fits and starts, his world begins to unravel.
Praise for So Many Ways to Begin:
"Jon McGregor might be the best chronicler I know of the way small accidents can set a life in motion, and the way what's said between people-or left unsaid-can change everything. This is a beautiful book, elegant and particular and heart wrenching. I loved it."-Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
"McGregor is a brilliant prose stylist, and here he excels at making … the ordinary seem extraordinary."-Sunday Times (UK )
Review
"Jon McGregor is a writer who will make a significant stamp on world literature. In fact, he already has."
Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin“[A] solemly lyrical novel…With grace and almost painful sensitivity, McGregor constructs a detailed character study that is also a meditation on the elusive nature of identity.”Boston Globe
"In this elegantly written novel, McGregor focuses on the interpersonal and the emotional, successfully dramatizing the impact of events on people's lives."Library Journal
"The search for home and for connection lies at the center of this slow, cadenced novel, which invests one mans day-to-day life with remarkable dignity.”Booklist (starred)
Synopsis
McGregor's second Booker-nominated novel, So Many Ways to Begin, tells the remarkable story of one man's journey of self-discovery. David Carter is an obsessive collector, and the curator of the local history museum. In addition to overseeing the community's archives, he has, since boyhood, diligently archived the items that tell his own life story: birth certificate, school report cards, movie and train tickets, all filed and cataloged, neat and tidy. But when an addled old aunt lets slip a long-buried family secret, David is forced to consider that his whole life may be constructed around a lie. His collection of artifacts can't begin to comprise the truth, and in fits and starts, his world begins to unravel. Powerfully moving and utterly unforgettable, So Many Ways to Begin is a potent examination of family and memory, a look at what happens when life forces you to let go of the person you might have been.
About the Author
Twice Booker-nominated Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and, most recently, Even the Dogs. He was born in Bermuda in 1976, grew up in Norfolk, and now lives in Nottingham, England.