so_many_ways_to_begin_mcgregor
2008 Longlist

So Many Ways to Begin

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

David is a museum curator whose assumptions about his own history are suddenly shattered and whose search for identity forms the narrative spine of the book. Eleanor escapes from an Aberdeen shipbuilding family and the darkly scornful influence of her mother into a new life for which she slowly loses her nerve. How do these two people connect, learn about each other, make sense of the stories of their lives? How do they cope with the failures and disappointments, the successes, of their marriage?
The narrative, emerging through the photos, letters, and artifacts which form David’s personal archive, ranges across wartime London, post-war Coventry and Aberdeen, rural Ireland; driven forward by a yearning search for meaning and coherence and truth. But the story always comes back to David and Eleanor, and to their quiet attempts to hold together something which they began before they could even understand what it was. So Many Ways To Begin is a story about the possibilities of love.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Jon
McGregor

Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham. Even the Dogs, published by Bloomsbury in February 2010 and in paperback in February 2011, is his third novel.

This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, published by Bloomsbury in February 2012, is the fourth novel from Jon McGregor, which tells the tales of the sorts of things you don’t imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do.

Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham. Even the Dogs, published by Bloomsbury in February 2010 and in paperback in February 2011, is his third novel.

This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, published by Bloomsbury in February 2012, is the fourth novel from Jon McGregor, which tells the tales of the sorts of things you don’t imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do.

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NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

A poetic journey in beautiful prose through several possible pasts darkly: truly a haunting book.

Beautifully written understated and moving story of an ordinary man coping with the ups and downs and emotions of his life.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
England
Original Language
English
Author
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing

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