So Many Ways to Begin

by Jon McGregor

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Featured image for So Many Ways to Begin

This book has a long prologue entirely written in italics. I decided I hated the book and I might as well skip the unreadable prologue and see if the chapters were any better. They were.

I liked the way the story was put together by a museum creator handling objects from his family’s past and recalling stories associated with them. I also liked the way all the speech was reported with not a quote mark in sight. The story itself isn’t anything remarkable; it’s just a very nicely told tale of fairly ordinary happenings that are kind of out of the ordinary in themselves. Hard to explain.

I went back and read the italicised prologue when I reached the end of the book. I don’t think I missed anything; all it does is confirm that something that happens at the end of the story happened how you thought it did from reading the rest of the book. Seemed to be spoiler like to me. I thought the book was better off without it anyway.