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How It All Began

A Novel

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How It All Began

By: Penelope Lively
Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
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Summary

When Charlotte is mugged and breaks her hip, her daughter, Rose, cannot accompany her employer, Lord Peters, to Manchester, which means his niece, Marion, has to go instead, which means she sends a text to her lover which is intercepted by his wife, which is…just the beginning of the ensuing chain of life-altering events.

In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told novel, Penelope Lively shows us how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal themselves, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other, and entire lives to become irrevocably changed.

©2011 Penelope Lively (P)2012 Isis Publishing Ltd Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Marriage
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Critic reviews

" Whatever your age, How It All Began is a splendid tonic." ( Telegraph)
"A sublime storyteller." ( Guardian)
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Penelope Lively does a very good job with the 'interconnectedness of all things'. The novel is structured with a lot of balance and movement, from person to person, picking up on their changing fortunes and feelings. The story does have you wondering - will they or won't they? It's a gentle story, told at a good pace, a comedy that strikes a chord with life today, particulalrly I suspect for the over-40s!

The reader, Anna Bentinck, does a lovely, lively job with the large and varied cast, with some neat nuances of accent and tone that really brought them to life for me.

I'd recommend this as a very enjoyable listen, light-hearted and engaging.

Amusing, enjoyable, lovely structure

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A good read with lots of dipping in and out of the lives of all these people who make the story come together. Easy to listen to and flows alone nicely. A good story.

How it all began

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The story quickly grew on me as did the characters, examining the butterfly effect on interrelated characters from a single event (a mugging). The narrator was just right for this novel and absolutely wonderful in performing each character for a truly enjoyable experience. I recommend to anyone who enjoys really getting into the skin of characters to see their lives from their own viewpoint. Delightful!

A quiet wonder of a book

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Wonderfully written, characters I cared about & beautifully narrated.
Towards the end, Lively says (I paraphrase) that, although it is the end, it isn't really - that endings are a literary device & in real-life, stories go on.
Despite such a satisfying ending, such is the quality of this book that I'm left longing to hear how these characters got on & how their stories continued to unfold.
Off to download more of this author's exquisite writing.

Wish I could discover it again for the first time

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How a single event can trigger a whole chain of other events. This is Penelope Lively at her very best - examining the way peoples' lives are linked together in some sort of web. Excellent portrayal of ageing and memory too. Loved it.

Penelope Lively at her best.

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