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Jon McGregor lives in Nottingham, England. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was nominated for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the 2003 Times Young Writer Award, and won the Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award.
Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways to Begin and Even the Dogs. He is the winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was runner-up for the BBC National Short Story Award in both 2010 and 2011, with 'If It Keeps on Raining' and 'Wires' respectively. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham.
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So Many Ways to Begin: A Novel
by Jon McGregor
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ISBN-13:
9781596919594
- Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
- Publication date: 12/27/2008
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 384
- Sales rank: 252,135
- File size: 871 KB
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In this potent examination of family and memory, Jon McGregor charts one man's voyage of self-discovery. Like Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, So Many Ways to Begin is rich in the intimate details that shape a life, the subtle strain that defines human relationships, and the personal history that forms identity. David Carter, the novel's protagonist, takes a keen interest in history as a boy. Encouraged by his doting Aunt Julia, he begins collecting the things that tell his story: a birth certificate, school report cards, annotated cinema and train tickets. After finishing school, he finds the perfect job for his lifetime obsession-curator at a local history museum. His professional and romantic lives take shape as his beloved aunt and mentor's unravels. Lost in a fog of senility, Julia lets slip that David had been adopted. Over the course of the next decades, as David and his wife Eleanor live out their lives-struggling through early marriage, professional disappointments, the birth of their daughter, Eleanor's depression, and an affair that ends badly- David attempts to physically piece together his past, finding meaning and connection where he least expects it.
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Publishers Weekly
David Carter grows up happy in post-WWII Coventry, England, where he combs bomb sites for things to collect and dreams of one day running his own museum. He lands a job at a local museum and, at age 22, learns from a mentally ill family friend that he was adopted as an infant. Irate and bewildered, David struggles to comprehend "how such a lie had been incorporated into official history" as he begins his adult life. His marriage to Eleanor provides some direction, but the couple is often rudderless, and McGregor (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things) charts with a calculated dreariness David's frustrated attempts to locate his birth mother, Eleanor's terrible depressions, their professional letdowns, a few moments of happiness and the way "it wasn't what they'd imagined, this life." Once retired, David is introduced to the Internet, which yields a promising lead in his quest to find his birth mother. Melancholy permeates every page; readers looking for an earnest downer can't go wrong. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
The questionable reality and emotional truth behind artifacts propel this story of a British man's search for his past. David Carter, a museum curator fascinated with history and objects, discovers in his mid-twenties that he is an adopted orphan and becomes consumed with discovering his birth parents. The narrative traces the events of his life, re-created around descriptions of objects he and family members have preserved. While researching in Aberdeen, Scotland, he meets and falls in love with Eleanor, who is determined, despite her working-class family's lack of support, to graduate from college. Readers follow their married years as they raise a daughter and cope with Eleanor's depressions and David's relations with a female coworker. It is only after their daughter leaves for college that David and Eleanor track down a woman in Ireland who may be David's birth mother. In this elegantly written novel, McGregor (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things) focuses on the interpersonal and the emotional, successfully dramatizing the impact of events on people's lives. Recommended for larger fiction collections. Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Literary aspiration can't save this British novel from maudlin domestic melodrama. Though McGregor earned a Booker Prize nomination for his debut (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, 2003), his sophomore work fails to distinguish itself. The major interest here is formalistic, as the narrative cuts back and forth across the decades in the same way that memory might. Memory, secrets, identity and blood ties are the chief concerns, though McGregor doesn't have much that's fresh to say about any of them. A prologue finds a young Irish girl sent to England to serve as a housemaid, where doing the family's bidding results in her pregnancy. She keeps her condition a secret, gives the baby away and goes on with her life. The novel then turns its attention to Eleanor and David Carter, many decades later, before delving into their courtship and individual family histories. David, who comes from a comparatively happy family, has an inordinate boyhood fascination with museums and collecting artifacts, as if connecting with the past can illuminate the present. Since David is the story's protagonist, the reader senses some irony here-he must be the baby who'd been given away, and who apparently has no idea of his own familial history. As David fulfills his ambition to become a curator, neither his parents nor his sister mention anything about adoption, and when the secret comes out (from Aunt Julia, who isn't really his aunt), David is shocked. He falls into marriage with Eleanor, who knows very well who her parents are, but has suffered from an abusive relationship with her mother and the failure of her father to protect her. David and Eleanor start a family of their own, Eleanor succumbs todepression, David considers an affair, parents on each side die, David makes it his life's mission to find his "real" mother. With its plot contrivances and drably conventional characters, this novel never comes alive on the page.
From the Publisher
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 A Family Daughter and Liars and Saints.“As in his award-winning debut novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2003), McGregor's follow-up work is a celebration of an ordinary life ... The search for home and for connection lies at the center of this slow, cadenced novel, which invests one man's day-to-day life with remarkable dignity.” —Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
“Captivating…a keen sense of detail and a lyrical writing style.” —San Francisco Chronicle on If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
“McGregor's sharp eye and broad sympathies show…a sizeable talent.” —Kirkus Reviews on If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
“McGregor's poignant debut examines in loving detail the lives of the inhabitants of a single block.” —Publishers Weekly on If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
“McGregor invests the human condition with a dignity which is almost painful to consider.” —Spectator on If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
“[McGregor] aims to leach all the beauty and significance from the vast space-time continuum known as the commonplace.” —San Diego Union-Tribune on If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
“Luminous…there is something devotional about McGregor's simple prose.” —Observer on If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things