Beginning Middle End: A Novel

Books

From the beloved, award-winning author of the culture-changing hits Lost Children Archive and Tell Me How it Ends comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and daughter traveling together after the collapse of a marriage and the dissolution of their traditional family structure. Valeria Luiselli's novel opens the morning a mother and her teenage daughter arrive in Sicily, during a summer of rapidly-changing winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden tempests. They've landed near the ancient ruins where the narrator's grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. How do you begin again, the mother wonders, pondering her family line, and what if the new beginning you're imagining is actually the end? While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives together-cooking meals side by side, reading out loud to each other, playing chess, bickering and making-up-her deeply intelligent, inquisitive daughter begins to take the reins of the story. She becomes ...