Penelope Lively, author of more than 50 fiction and non-fiction titles, has a reputation for being seamless. Her most recent novel, “How It All Began,” has continued in that progression, revealing her unstoppable ability to keep readers captivated by the art of storytelling.
We begin in London with Charlotte Rainsford, a calm and independent retiree in her 70s who has just finished her day. Readers get to know Charlotte at page one, just seconds into an assault.
Charlotte is lying on the ground. She has just been mugged and cannot manage to get up. The perpetrators fled, taking her purse and dignity with them.
After all, the event forces her to accept that she can no longer live that life of independency. She is both physically and emotionally challenged as a result of the experience and must not only heal the wounds of a shattered hip, but also heal herself by regaining reliance.
As a result, Charlotte moves in with her daughter, Rose, and son-in-law, Gerry. While they seem more than accommodating, Charlotte cannot help but feel as though she is a burden.
On her road to self-discovery, Charlotte’s story wanes as readers are given a look into the many other colorful characters in the book. While Charlotte is perhaps the most important, her daughter and her acquaintance Anton — a handsome foreigner attempting to master the English language — often manage to upstage Charlotte.
However, one of the most appealing characters is the narrator — a god of circumstance and mishap unseen to the world, but meddling and mucking up the characters’ lives. The omniscient narrator is well aware of the events that will unfold, but like this cast of characters, readers must also blindly move ahead.
Overall, the plot is anything but simple. However, even withstanding the many characters and routes this story takes, the characters remain authentic and the events realistic. Lively’s storytelling takes readers from one event that leads to many unfortunate events — all fueled by a chaos theory; specifically exemplifying to readers how one incident can create a ripple effect throughout the lives of many.
Lively’s writing comes highly recommended. At first, readers believe all of the characters to be seemingly unconnected, but by the end of the novel, they have become interconnected with each other — finding their own resolutions, which as a work-in-progress continue even after the final page. As a caveat, her wit and ability to hypnotize readers is definite, as you, too, may find yourself reading the entire book in one sitting.
Rating: W W W W 1/2
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