“A close reading of ordinary lives, a tender and often beautifully poetic rendering of the unremarkable.”
Stephanie Merrit, The Observer.
“A wonderful novel; low-key but beautifully paced, scattered with extraordinarily intense moments.”
Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, Independent on Sunday.
“Another quiet act of preservation… in the end, this moving and honest novel becomes a defence of storytelling for its own sake.”
“McGregor, having exhausted the impact of the close up, has begun to explore the potential of long shots.”
“McGregor is nothing if not ambiguous, and it’s to his credit that he eschews the neat tying up of every loose end. Everything dangles, yet a kind of weary peace descends.”
“(This novel) underplays even the most emotional scenes.. (and has an)..excruciatingly undramatic view of reality.”
Christina Koning, The Times. She really didn’t like it.
“As a follow up to McGregor’s much lauded and poetic debut, If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things, this is a disappointing book, its insistence on arbitrariness and ordinariness failing, this time, to impart what’s special about our ordinary lives.”
Susan Elderkin, Sunday Telegraph. She really didn’t like it either.
“McGregor is an expert story-teller, employing clean, unadorned language to create an intimate narrative. His characters are fully fleshed individuals, each one meriting a novel of their own.”
Justine McCarthy, Irish Independent
“McGregor’s talent remains dazzlingly apparent…. With an unassuming, controlled lyricism, McGregor captures in near-poetry what it is to lose our beginnings and to recreate a past, which is all we can ever do.”
Fiona Atherton, Scotland on Sunday
“One of those page turning reads of complete immersion.”
dovegreyreader.
(She liked the book, mostly, although she was disappointed by Jon’s anachronistic misnaming of the Royal London Hospital. Not as disappointed as he was, since it was where his grandfather spent most of his nursing career. He’ll try harder next time, Dovegreyreader, we’ll make sure of that. Thanks for setting him straight.)
“But the portrait of a troubled yet tender and affectionate marriage which is at the heart of this novel is astoundingly convincing and often extremely moving.”
And, just for fun, here’s a picture of the book on flickr.
For more background information on So Many Ways To Begin, including photos of some of the artefacts featured in the book, maps, and a reading group guide from Bloomsbury, go here.
