Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

How It All Began

3.45 of 5 stars 3.45 · rating details · 2,380 ratings · 551 reviews

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 in the ensuing chain of life-altering events.

In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told n...more

Hardcover, 240 pages

Published January 5th 2012 by Viking Adult (first published November 2011)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Man Booker Prize Eligible 2012

12th out of 152 books — 223 voters

Ascending Into Euphoria by Tiffany Tinney

Letters to a Prisoner by Cornelia "Connie D." DeDona

Books I have Won thru Goodreads Giveaways.

8th out of 16 books — 8 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Mar 31, 2013 Trish rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: british, fiction, funny

Oh, I dearly loved this book about an event which spawned a series of follow-on events, some of which could be termed momentous, in the context of a life. The story was funny and true and ridiculous and painful and all those things that life can be. It was comforting to hear about folks whose lives had hit a major speed bump but who managed, by shuffling the deck, to usher in a new chapter in their lives, one that they liked even better. But it is lightly told, and not so painful for us, safely...more Oh, I dearly loved this book about an event which spawned a series of follow-on events, some of which could be termed momentous, in the context of a life. The story was funny and true and ridiculous and painful and all those things that life can be. It was comforting to hear about folks whose lives had hit a major speed bump but who managed, by shuffling the deck, to usher in a new chapter in their lives, one that they liked even better. But it is lightly told, and not so painful for us, safely behind our reading glasses, sipping tea and considering just how awful divorce could be…for the characters of course.

I was also struck by parallels between the theme in this book by Lively and Kate Atkinson’s new offering Life After Life . It is almost as though the grande Dames of British Literature were given a writing assignment to mull over the possibility that Hitler had never been born or had died in early life, before the tragedy of World War II. The assignment might have specified that they didn’t have to focus on the 1940’s, they just had to mention Hitler and make their story relevant to a new reality. Consider Lively’s contribution, that she places in the mouth of Henry, retired University professor and a man sure of his talent to make history interesting and relevant:

I myself have a soft spot for what is known as the Cleopatra’s nose theory of history—the proposal that had the nose of Cleopatra been an inch longer the fortunes of Rome would have been different. A reductio ad absurdam, perhaps, but a reference to random causality that makes a lot of sense when we think about the erratic sequence of events that we call history. And we find that we home in on the catalysts—the intervention of those seminal figures who will direct events. Caesar himself. Charlemagne. Napoleon. Hitler. If this man or that—no, this person or that—had not existed, how differently could things have turned out? Focus upon a smaller canvas—England in the eighteenth century, of, indeed, any other century—and we find again that it is personalities that direct events, the human hand that steers the course of time…A decision is made in one place, and far away a thousand will die.”

Then, consider Kate Atkinson’s contemplation of this question, whom she gives to Ursula, her protagonist :

“Don’t you wonder sometimes, “ Ursula said. “If just one small thing had been changed, in the past, I mean. If Hitler had died at birth, or if someone had kidnapped him as a baby and brought him up in—I don’t know, say a Quaker household—surely things would be different.”

And it is a great theme to be going along with: eliminating those pesky outsized actors from our history. After all, isn’t life complicated enough with just our own mistakes to manage?

In any case, the thing that really caught my attention in this book, and that I loved above even the story (something which Lively spends some time considering—how a story can draw us in) is the discussion an older woman, a retired teacher of literature as it happens, has with a younger economic migrant to whom she is teaching the fundamentals of reading. They speak of language, words, and the passion the younger man has for stories. He’d had trouble learning English, both spoken and written, but he was passionate about stories. So she teaches him, rather than the language of commerce, the language of poetry. She gave him stories, and his passion for stories developed into a passion for words, which he collected assiduously and used ardently. He loved, and was loved though words. It was delightful.
(less)

9 likes · like · see review

Apr 01, 2012 Kay rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction, best-of-2012

At age 77, Charlotte has retired from a career as the sort of teacher who changes students' lives. Though widowed, she volunteers to teach adult literacy and is fiercely independent right up to the minute that a mugger throws her to the pavement, breaking her hip. Forced to live with her daughter and son-in-law while recuperating, she agrees to have one of her adult students come to the house for tutoring. This sets the plot in motion, affecting the lives of many people around her.

I've always en...more

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 01, 2012 Lisa rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: unfinished

This is how it all began:

While the premise of this book --the butterfly effect -- is intriguing, the execution was a real turn off. Incomplete sentences and a very British style (and I love England!!) kept me from getting into it. Take the first page:

"...A face is alongside hers. Woman. Nice woman." Or another sentence a few pages later: "So. Just what one didn't want. Being a burden and all that. What one had hoped to avoid." Ugh!

Sentences are filled with ellipses and narrations are changed ab...more

9 likes · like · see review

Apr 22, 2013 Susan Oleksiw rated it 4 of 5 stars

Penelope Lively is a gifted writer who explores with wit and insight, humor and compassion, the way lives are affected by the random events of their own lives and the lives around them. Charlotte, a seventy-seven year old retired teacher, is mugged, breaks a hip in falling, and is forced to spend several weeks with her daughter, Rose, and her daughter's husband, Gerry. The fall means that Rose can't take a journey with her employer, Lord Peters, so his niece, Marion, fills in. This leads to Mari...more

like · see review

Apr 02, 2013 Scrittevolmente rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Quante volte nel corso di una giornata ci chiediamo, magari superficialmente, “Ma come sarebbe andate se avessi fatto… se avessi detto… se avessi visto…”? Quanto peso ha per noi il caso, il destino, il fato, la coincidenza, o tutta quella strana miscellanea di eventi che si susseguono e a cui ognuno dà un nome diverso?
Penelope Lively ha provato a mostrarcelo con questo romanzo delicato, gentile e ironico, prendendo un evento iniziale e dipanandosi tra le sette vite che si sono modificate in funz...more

like · see review

Mar 31, 2013 Kathleen Hagen added it

Shelves: 2013-audio

How It All Began, by Penelope Lively, Narrated by Katherine Kellgren, Produced by Audible Inc. downloaded from audible.com.

The author shows us how everything that happened in the period of time covered by the book happened ultimately because Charlotte was mugged and broke her hip. Because that happened, Charlotte’s daughter, Rose, could not accompany her boss, Henry, to a lecture because she was home with her mother. Because Rose was home with her mother, Henry’s niece, Marian, accompanied him t...more

like · see review

Mar 18, 2013 Cameling rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love the premise of this book, that a single incident, such someone being mugged, could have a ripple effect into the lives of 6 or 7 other people, most of whom aren't even aware of the victim. In this, Charlotte has been mugged and as a result has injured her hip, requiring her to move in with her daughter, Rose and her husband, Gary. But because of her accident, we are introduced to Rose, who, needing to reshuffle her work, introduces us to her employer, Lord Henry, a one-time prominent acad...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 12, 2013 Robert E. Kennedy Library rated it 3 of 5 stars

A British novel set in the present. The plot is driven by the repercussions from a mugging. Charlotte, a retired English teacher, is knocked down by a couple of thugs who steal her purse. Since she breaks a hip, she temporarily stays with her daughter and son-in-law. A Polish immigrant she tutors in English now comes to her daughter’s house for their session, and strikes up a friendship. The daughter’s job with a self-important historian unravels as a suavely self-serving young academic worms hi...more

like · see review

Mar 07, 2013 Dot rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: dot-s-booklist-2013

I enjoyed this book very much. The plot is based on \"the \Butterfly Effect" or in this case, how a chance event in the life of one person can cause a chain reaction affecting the lives of people at several degrees of separation. The characters are intriguing and the author skilfully handles the integration of several different story lines and brings them to a satisfactory conclusion. Along the way, there is a discussion of the importance of story in literature and of the academic study of histo...more

like · see review

Feb 08, 2013 William rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed much of Penelope Lively's considerable output, about half of the nineteen novels she has written. This is the first time I find myself fairly neutral about something she has written. There is nothing wrong with "How it All Began," but it left no impression on me once I finished reading it.

The story involves an elderly woman who has to lodge with her daughter after being the victim of a mugger. The consequences of her injury are explored, in the manner of "The Butterfly Effect" me...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 14, 2013 Lesismore rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like the idea that our actions and behavior affect everything around us. I'm not sure that I liked all of the consequences or choices of the people in this story, I'm not even sure that I liked the people in this story, but there were some nice things to think about...

"History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion."

"Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by...more

like · see review

Dec 22, 2012 Anne Broyles rated it 3 of 5 stars

In this uber British novel, Lively explores how one event leads to another, rippling out from one person's life to another. Her colorful set of characters change from the rippling events, adjusting to their circumstances. Lively w rites (page 224), "The stories so capriciously triggered because something happened to Charlotte in the street one day. But of course this is not the end of the story, the stories. An ending is an artificial device; we like endings, they are satisfying, convenient, an...more

like · see review

Nov 18, 2012 Susan Chapman rated it 2 of 5 stars

I've liked other titles by this writer but was disappointed with this one. A plot has been devised, and characters invented to implement it. A nice well-educated elderly lady -- about the author's age, with a middle-class background rather like that of the author -- gets mugged, and some not-very-earthshaking consequences ensue for various others, including the muggee's daughter, her daughter's employer, her daughter's employer's niece, her daughter's employer's niece's lover, etc.

None of these...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 04, 2012 Jon rated it 3 of 5 stars

I recently read Capital by John Lanchester, a very, very long book similar in many ways to this one. Lanchester has a much larger and more diverse cast of London characters, whose stories intersect only occasionally, while this one is structured according to "the butterfly effect" as a single incident affects the lives of a much smaller cast. The style, the short scenes, the light irony, the implicit social criticism, and the insight into character are all very similar. But this one is also abou...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 26, 2012 Kim Fay rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have been a devoted Penelope Lively fan ever since I read "Moon Tiger" back in the early 1990s. In fact, I've reread that novel a few times since, and it holds up every time. I think it's because there is such authority in her writing. Not arrogance ... Lively writes from a place of genuine understanding of human nature. Better yet, she doesn't take herself too seriously. Her brilliance is in her ability with nuance, a talent that never fails to impress me. In this novel, Charlotte Rainsford i...more

5 likes · like · see review

Aug 28, 2012 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have often thought about how a simple act or a quick decision has ended up having the most profound impact on my life--if I hadn't volunteered here, I never would have met a certain individual, who told a friend about me, which caused the friend to offer me a part-time job. And that job ended up being the best job that I ever had. If my husband hadn't broken his leg after leaping out of a perfectly good airplane, he never would have gone to law school. You know, it's the old "if you give a mou...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jul 26, 2012 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars

How it All Began has an interesting premise. Charlotte Rainsford is mugged on the streets of London and this sets off a chain of events that changes the fates of her daughter and various other random people. I have always believed in fate and how one small choice by someone can have a ripple effect across the lives of many others. It was very interesting to see how this played out in the novel, although I did think it tended to be a bit dry at times. I thought Lively did a great job of bringing...more

like · see review

Jun 11, 2012 Deborah Markus rated it 5 of 5 stars

I went ahead and marked this five stars for "amazing," because it's rare that a contemporary novel is quotable. The main character is an educated British woman in her seventies, recovering from a mugging. First sentence:

"The pavement rises up and hits her."

Terrific, right? Here's a bit from when she's ruminating on being in constant pain from the resultant broken hip:

"Ah, old age. The twilight years -- that delicate phrase. Twilight my foot -- roaring dawn of a new life, more like, the one you...more

like · see review

May 30, 2012 Lindsey Hundt added it

When Charlotte Rainsford, a retired schoolteacher, is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike. A marriage unravels after an illicit love affair is revealed through an errant cell phone message; a posh yet financially strapped interior designer meets a business partner who might prove too good to be true; an old-guard historian tries to recapture his youthful vigor with an ill-conceived idea for a TV miniseries; a...more

like · see review

May 29, 2012 Dana rated it 3 of 5 stars

This a.m. after a brutally hot hour long walk,I sat down in a chair with the ceiling fan whirling about me, and the a/c set to 68, trying to cool down. no better way than to do that with a book in hand. I finished Penelope Lively's newest novel (she is a Brit who has written many books over her long literary career). This one was called "How It All Began." Think about circumstance, happenstance, serendipity, being a minute late, a day early, in a certain place at a certain time and how that can...more This a.m. after a brutally hot hour long walk,I sat down in a chair with the ceiling fan whirling about me, and the a/c set to 68, trying to cool down. no better way than to do that with a book in hand. I finished Penelope Lively's newest novel (she is a Brit who has written many books over her long literary career). This one was called "How It All Began." Think about circumstance, happenstance, serendipity, being a minute late, a day early, in a certain place at a certain time and how that can change YOUR life, and the lives of all those in your circle forever. Such is the premise here. 77 yr. old Charlotte is mugged one day by a 14 yr. old boy on the streets of London. Her hip is broken, which means she can not live in her own flat again until she is healed. She moves into the home of her daughter, Rose, (& Rose's husband, Gerry) for a few months. She notices Rose and Gerry don't communicate much, and now Rose cannot do her work for old Henry, a self absorbed historian trying to publish his memoir (as she is nursing her mother). So Marion, Henry's niece, has to make some change of plans in HER life to help Henry. In that task, Marion sends a text to her married lover, Jeremy, who has left his phone behind and the obvious message is seen by his wife, Stella. All hell breaks lose there! Meanwhile, Charlotte, who had been a teacher, is now teaching English as a 2nd language to Anton, a lovely man from eastern Europe, who has been dumped by his wife and lost his job as an accountant due to the economy, and has ended up in london, hoping to better his life. Charlotte teaches him English during sessions at Rose's house. Rose arrives home each day at the end of these lessons, makes tea for her mother and Anton ( who is temporarily doing construction work) and begins to care for him, sending Rose & Anton a place they never thought they would go. They take long walks around London, become wonderful friends, and grow to love one another. But choices have to be made before a line is crossed....and so it goes. so many things happen or don't happen because a 14 yr. old boy decided to mug someone on a specific day & time and Charlotte just happened to be in that place, during the time that this boy carried out his impulse. This was not the fastest read, and at times I was bored, but then it picked up again and held my interest for the last 100 pages.(less)

like · see review

May 12, 2012 Kathy rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a fun, easy read. It's basically about "the butterfly effect": an elderly woman named Charlotte is mugged on a London street, and the event has a ripple effect in the lives of people around her, some of whom she doesn't even know. In a few cases, lives are profoundly changed. In other cases, a window merely opens in someone's life.
I liked Charlotte as a character. She is the kind of person I imagine I'll be in old age: bookish, good-hearted, enduring the aches & pains & losses...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 07, 2012 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Butterfly Effect, where something small happens but the effects of it ripple out to larger proportions, is examined when the older Charlotte is mugged. A philandering husband is about to get in trouble with his wife; his mistress is facing financial turmoil; the daughter Charlotte temporarily moves in with is examining her predictable, stolid marriage in light of the quietly driven Anton, an immigrant Charlotte is teaching to read. And the impossibly obtuse and self-important Henry is attemp...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 31, 2012 Barbara A rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's the last day of March and I have found my second special book of the year. While I admired 'Train Dreams' for its spare and purposely disconnected narrative, I adored 'How It All Began' for its urban sophistication and its commitment to literature itself. One might even consider literature, and literacy, as the leitmotif of this Penelope-perfect novel . Although ostensibly a 21st century 'for-want-of-a-nail' story, which others have called the butterfly effect or chaos theory, both the cent...more It's the last day of March and I have found my second special book of the year. While I admired 'Train Dreams' for its spare and purposely disconnected narrative, I adored 'How It All Began' for its urban sophistication and its commitment to literature itself. One might even consider literature, and literacy, as the leitmotif of this Penelope-perfect novel . Although ostensibly a 21st century 'for-want-of-a-nail' story, which others have called the butterfly effect or chaos theory, both the central character and the novel's most poignant extended vignette have to do with reading. Consider this passage, in which our mugged, injured, and recuperating heroine, elderly
Charlotte, thinks aloud:

"....This thought segues into another, in some mysterious process of free association; now she is pushing an infant Rose in her pram, back from the library---her attention is distracted, and when she looks down into the pram she sees that Rose has got hold of the greengrocer's brown paper bag, there are squashed tomatoes all over Elizabeth Bowen and Iris Murdoch."

I fall head over heels at this imagery, at the specificity; at the direct allusion to acclaimed writers of Charlotte's ( and Lively's) era-- especially when contrasted with the the following, in which Charlotte, well enough to take a cab to the the specialist's, still can't roam about looking for the perfect book to take with her, and, in haste, grabs one of her son-in-law's:

"Charlotte settled herself down and took out The Da Vinci Code. ....,A few pages of The Da Vinci Code and she knew she could go no further with this. Moreover, she felt that her reading matter nailed her: the woman beside her had glanced at the book and given her a complicit smile and nod. I am seen as a Da Vinci Code person, thought Charlotte. Well, there would be a certain affectation in being someone who sat in a hospital waiting-room reading Dostoevsky."

Ouch! A punch of self-awareness on the part of THIS reader! Tell the truth, dear Goodreads friend, haven't you paid conscious attention to what book you'll read on a plane, a beach, or in a waiting room?

There are several other passages about choices in literature, particularly about the recovering Charlotte using her downtime to teach an immigrant accountant how to read by starting with "Where the Wild Things Are" that are equally enchanting, but to the main thing:
although not too much of earth shattering importance happens in this small novel, I adored it. Lively's, and Charlotte's commitment to writing, to history, to be both literate and literary, was, in reality, more important to the plot that any string of coincidences, and for me, this book was a perfect gem.

(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 11, 2012 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: british

I always enjoy Lively's books--her writing is crisp and expressive, and her characters well drawn. This one begins with the mugging of an older woman, a retired English teacher, Charlotte. The "it" of the title refers to all that happens to Lively's characters in the wake of Charlotte's mugging. Charlotte moves in with her grown daughter Rose and Rose's husband Gerry. Rose's employer, Lord Henry, a pompous, aging historian, must call upon his niece Marion to serve as his PA when Rose is occupied...more I always enjoy Lively's books--her writing is crisp and expressive, and her characters well drawn. This one begins with the mugging of an older woman, a retired English teacher, Charlotte. The "it" of the title refers to all that happens to Lively's characters in the wake of Charlotte's mugging. Charlotte moves in with her grown daughter Rose and Rose's husband Gerry. Rose's employer, Lord Henry, a pompous, aging historian, must call upon his niece Marion to serve as his PA when Rose is occupied with Charlotte. Anton, a recent immigrant, comes to Rose's house for English lessons from Charlotte and develops a relationship with Rose as well. Jeremy, a philandering antiques dealer whose wife discovers his affair when Marion texts him to cancel their plans, must face the prospect of a costly and unwanted divorce. Lively playfully engages questions of fate and happenstance, and in many ways, this novel is a comedy of manners. She effectively shifts among the consciousnesses of her characters in a style reminiscent of Alexander McCall Smith, one of my favorite contemporary writers. Like Smith, Lively deals in the quotidian but manages to communicate small but quietly profound truths about life. One of my favorite passages in the novel deals with Charlotte and her relationship to reading: "Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even....Thus has reading wound in with living, each a complement to the other. Charlotte knows herself to ride upon a great sea of words, or language, of stories and situations and information, of knowledge, some of which she can summon up, much of which is half lost, but is in there somewhere, and has had an effect on who she is and how she thinks. She is as much a product of what she has read as of the way in which she has lived; she is like millions of others built by books, for whom books are an essential foodstuff, who could starve without" (34-35). Love that. (less)

1 like · like · see review

Feb 27, 2012 Felice rated it 5 of 5 stars

How It All Began is Penelope Lively’s marvelous new book about the Chaos Theory or if it’s more understandable you (And me too!) could use the science behind If You Give A Mouse A Cookie as your template. No she hasn’t become James Gleick on us. How It All Began is a novel, a fabulous novel. The title is the kind that tells you the whole story and none of the story at the same time I always like that.

Lively’s chaos starts with Charlotte Rainsford’s mugging. When Charlotte gets mugged her hip is...more How It All Began is Penelope Lively’s marvelous new book about the Chaos Theory or if it’s more understandable you (And me too!) could use the science behind If You Give A Mouse A Cookie as your template. No she hasn’t become James Gleick on us. How It All Began is a novel, a fabulous novel. The title is the kind that tells you the whole story and none of the story at the same time I always like that.

Lively’s chaos starts with Charlotte Rainsford’s mugging. When Charlotte gets mugged her hip is broken, when her hip is broken she has to stay with daughter Rose and family to recover. This chain of events stretches into other households unknown to Charlotte revealing among other things: an adulterous affair, the opportunity for an affair, career opportunities for advancement and failure.

The chapters alternate between all of the lives that Charlotte’s fall impacts. This technique has two potential pitfalls. In some authors’ hands this method often creates a short story collection rather than a cohesive novel. The more common problem with this strict back and forth between characters lives is the authors’ inability to build the same level of interest between each character. Inevitably you are spellbound by one or two characters and the rest? Ho-hum. Not to worry with Penelope Lively. This is a novel where each life is individual and a part of the whole AND you are happily invested in each character.

Each of lives in How It All Began is beset in some way by the problem of aging. As the most senior characters in the book Charlotte and Lord Peter have the most straight forward aging issues. They are edging their way toward the loss of independence and mental sharpness. The rest of the main characters in the novel are years younger than Charlotte and Peter but age has them all by the throat. The clock is ticking away and there are past, present and future choices to evaluate.

How It All Began, like Lively’s other novels, is a disarmingly gentle story keenly observed. These are characters with recognizable problems, good and bad habits who all live in the same world that you and I do. How does Penelope Lively make a novel so accessible so interesting? She imbues her characters and storylines with a complexity, a richness that despite their familiarity keeps them intriguing. All this is accomplished without sacrificing Livelys’ satirical wit. How It All Began was reading love for me from beginning to end.(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 17, 2012 Nancy rated it 3 of 5 stars

How It All Began kept me engaged enough to keep reading, but I was not always enthralled. An annoyance was the author's need to tell me the point of the book, which is how relatively small, random events can cast a wide circle of consequences. I might not have minded if she'd told me once. She seemed, however, to think I might be slow, so she repeated the point several times to be sure I got it. Toward the end of the book, she began to lecture about how we like stories to have decisive endings,...more

4 likes · like · see review

Jan 29, 2012 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Penelope Lively does a better job than any other author I’ve ever read at conveying the obvious rationality of her characters'perspectives and inner lives while simultaneously, and respectfully, showing how irrational they are (in the light of outward events or other characters’ views). And she does that for dozens of characters in her latest novel “How It All Began.” This book is an excellent read just for entering and sharing peoples’ simple and normal lives. At the same time, those lives enco...more

4 likes · like · see review

Nov 20, 2011 Caren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

It's the dark and gloomy time of year. Wouldn't you like to visit London, and be invited into the lives of a cluster of very interesting people as they are affected by a chance encounter? Let Penelope Lively take you there. Her novel is an exploration of "chaos theory", the idea that small changes in initial conditions could have great implications for the final outcome. It's also known as the "butterfly effect", which says that a butterfly may flutter its wings in the Amazon and a storm occurs...more It's the dark and gloomy time of year. Wouldn't you like to visit London, and be invited into the lives of a cluster of very interesting people as they are affected by a chance encounter? Let Penelope Lively take you there. Her novel is an exploration of "chaos theory", the idea that small changes in initial conditions could have great implications for the final outcome. It's also known as the "butterfly effect", which says that a butterfly may flutter its wings in the Amazon and a storm occurs much later in a faraway part of the world. One of her characters mentions this in passing in the book. Ms. Lively is a seasoned writer who gives her fully developed characters interesting thoughts and ideas. In brief, the plot hinges on how a random mugging of seventy-seven-year-old Charlotte, by a fourteen year old who grabs her purse and knocks her down, sets off a series of events in her life, and in the lives of those whose lives touch hers. By the end of the book, you will feel you know these people and are sorry to bid them farewell. We meet Charlotte's daughter, Rose, who is a personal assistant to Henry, an aging academic. When Charlotte's hip is broken in the mugging, Rose cannot accompany Henry to a conference in Manchester, so Marion, Henry's niece, takes her place. Marion sends a text to her lover, Jeremy, to advise him of her change of plans and Jeremy's wife, Stella, intercepts the text. Distraught, Stella begins divorce proceedings. Meanwhile, to engage her mind, Charlotte (who has moved in temporarily with Rose and Rose's husband, Gerry) takes on a Polish immigrant as a student. Charlotte is forced to tutor the Pole, Anton, in Rose's home, launching an unexpected and poignant friendship between Rose and Anton, a friendship that threatens to develop into something more. This is just the tip of the events that spin out, one after the other, taking the characters to places they had not planned to go. Each piece of the story fits into the whole and wraps up by the end in a very satisfying way. My little sojourn in modern-day Britain, courtesy of Ms. Lively, was such a pleasure, I came back to my real world with a sigh....
[This book brings to mind a YA novel which also seems to explore chaos theory, "As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth" by Lynne Rae Perkins.](less)

like · see review

Apr 20, 2012 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Somewhere in the Amazon, a butterfly flaps its wings and provokes a tornado in Texas. So goes the chaos theory – a proposition that apparently random phenomena have underlying order. It is the premise of Penelope Lively’s thoroughly engaging and delightful new book, where at least seven lives are derailed one day in mid-April.

It all begins when Charlotte Rainsford – a 76-year-old woman – is accosted by an unknown teenage thief on the streets of London and breaks her hip. That one random event gi...more Somewhere in the Amazon, a butterfly flaps its wings and provokes a tornado in Texas. So goes the chaos theory – a proposition that apparently random phenomena have underlying order. It is the premise of Penelope Lively’s thoroughly engaging and delightful new book, where at least seven lives are derailed one day in mid-April.

It all begins when Charlotte Rainsford – a 76-year-old woman – is accosted by an unknown teenage thief on the streets of London and breaks her hip. That one random event gives way to a slew of other related events: Charlotte must recuperate at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Rose and Gerry. Bored out of her mind, she takes on an adult student – Anton, a European immigrant who is learning the English language – who fascinates Rose in a way that hasn’t happened in years.

And, since Rose must tend to her mother, she cannot go to Manchester with her boss, an ancient historian named Henry, who takes his niece Marion instead. It’s during that trip that Marion meets a shyster and, at the same time, is forced to start reconsidering her affair with the very-married Jeremy, whose wife Stella finds out about the affair, and… well, the “chaos theory” goes on and on.

None of this is particularly innovative but it’s done so exceedingly well and with such aplomb and good humor that the reader cannot help but be carried along. As the historian Henry notes, “Progress is forever skewed by circumstance – the unforeseen event, an untimely death, the unpredicted circumstance, and the course of history would be one of seamless advance.” History and life are,the author suggests, subject to interpretation and random fate.

I cannot help but end this review by quoting Ms. Lively’s key character, Charlotte, on her love of reading. “She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even. She has read to discover what it is to be good or bad; she has read to find out if things are the same for others as they are for her – then, discovering frequently they are not, she has read to find out what it is that other people experience that she is missing.” I have read Once We Belong for many of these same reasons – and I’ve been rewarded.
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 28, 2012 Connie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found Penelope Lively eminently quotable and her life philosophies well expressed. That said, I will quote her here: "Charlotte was quarreling with Henry James. That is to say, she was finding James's sentence constructions a bit too much..." I felt the same pain. I found it very distracting when mystery symbols regularly popped up in the text of Lively's own sentence constructions. What symbols? Square, dot, square, dot, square, dot. Most of my attention stayed trying to make sense of it. But...more

2 likes · like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (12)

More editions...

Genres

Literary Fiction

15 users

Book Club

12 users

European Literature > British Literature

11 users

Contemporary

8 users

Adult

7 users

Adult Fiction

7 users

Novels

5 users

Humor

3 users

Realistic Fiction

3 users

Family

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively CBE (born March 17, 1933) is a prolific, popular and critically acclaimed author of fiction for both children and adults. She has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, winning once for Moon Tiger in 1987.

Born in Cairo in 1933, she spent her early childhood in Egypt, before being sent to boarding school in England at the age of twelve. She read Modern History at St Anne...more

More about Penelope Lively...

Books by Penelope Lively

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About How It All Began

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from How It All Began

“Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even. ... She is as much a product of what she has read as of the way in which she has lived; she is like millions of others built by books, for whom books are an essential foodstuff, who could starve without.” — 11 people liked it

“She read to find out what it was like to be French or Russian in the nineteenth century, to be a rich New Yorker then, or a Midwestern pioneer. She read to discover how not to be Charlotte, how to escape the prison of her own mind, how to expand, and experience.” — 2 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: How It All Began
avg rating	preview: How It All Began Goodreads rating: 3.45 (2380 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797374-how-it-all-began?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331237132l/11797374.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797374-how-it-all-began?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]How It All Began by Penelope Lively[/url]

How It All Began

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website