Beginning Middle End
About the book
Author: Valeria Luiselli
Publisher: Knopf
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)
My review
I have been a huge fan of Valeria Luiselli since I read her book-length essay about her time translating for children seeking asylum across the US-Mexico border, Tell Me How It Ends. Her excellent novel, Lost Children Archive, cemented that love. And now Beginning Middle End has deepened it even further.
Beginning Middle End shares a protagonist with Lost Children Archive, but I would not call it a sequel as you absolutely do not need to read LCA in order to read BME; all you really need to know, which is explained on-page, is that the main character has just gone through a divorce and is staying in Sicily with her daughter while navigating solo parenthood for the first time. The book, which is written in a series of vignettes in sections that are named for the winds of Sicily, explores not only the idea of motherhood and daughterhood (both between the protagonist and her daughter and the protagonist and her mother back home), but also how we can identify a beginning and an ending when we live perpetually in the middle of our own lives? And yet it is also so, so much more than that.
For most of the book, I was charmed and intrigued, but I admit I was sort of waiting to experience the love that many of my friends had described. Then I got to the last section and BOOM there it was, having hidden in plain sight all the time. I had also found myself puzzled but curious about the vignette titles throughout the book. I had eventually concluded they were beyond my level of literary intelligence. But not so! All I can say is they really paid off; hang in there because it’s more than worth it. Luiselli is a creative genius and I bow down.
It’s also worth noting that this book is deeply informed and in conversation with Greek mythology, which deepens the experience if you are familiar with the references but don’t take anything away if you are not. That includes the Odyssey but especially the myth of Proteus. This was a big plus in my book.
Finally, a warning: Don’t do this book on audio only, much as I loved the production. The entire last section of the book consists of postcards written by the daughter, and it’s entirely omitted from the audio edition, which shocked me! If I hadn’t been tandem reading, I never would have even known there was more book. At the same time I hesitate to recommend print only because of the gorgeous soundscape included in the audiobook (which you can admittedly listen to online instead but it’s not the same when it doesn’t happen inside the book). So the only possible solution is to tandem read this book.
Anyway, I loved this and can’t believe it wasn’t on the Booker Prize Longlist. Surely the Women’s Prize will come through in the spring!
Content and trigger warnings
Sexual assault (minor)
Xenophobia
