How It All Began
by Penelope Lively
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The mugging of a retired schoolteacher on a London street has unexpected repercussions for her friends and neighbors when it inadvertently reveals an illicit love affair, leads to a business partnership, and helps an immigrant to reinvent his life.Tags
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I used to read a lot of Penelope Lively and then around ten years ago we had a big clear-out of our bookshelves and I got rid of most of the old Penelope Lively books that we had (except Moon Tiger, one of my favourites. I think I had just read too many of her books in a short space of time and was a bit bored. And now of course, I'm regretting that we no longer have those books and want to re-read them. How it All Began is her latest book, written at the age of nearly eighty, which deals with the ramifications spreading out from a single chance event, and in doing so deals beautifully with the realities of ageing and family life.
Charlotte is mugged: an independent woman in her seventies, she is forced to move in temporarily with her show more daughter and son-in-law while her broken hip heals. But the ramifications from her accident spread far beyond her immediate family. When her daughter Rose is forced to cancel her trip accompanying her employer, Lord Henry Peters, an ageing historian, he asks his niece Marian to accompany him instead, which forces her to text a cancellation to her married lover that is picked up by his wife. And without the ever efficient Rose, the lecture notes are forgotten, forcing Lord Peters to confront the signs of his own ageing as he stumbles through a talk that would once have been child's play for him. And Charlotte's introduction of an Eastern European immigrant to her daughter's house, as she continues to give the reading lessons which she has previously provided in class, has implications for Rose's own future.
Altogether a very good read: in detailing the different reactions of Charlotte and Lord Peters to the aging process it seems to provide a wonderful insight into the realities of ageing. I think that I'll be going back to read more Penelope Lively in the near future. show less
Charlotte is mugged: an independent woman in her seventies, she is forced to move in temporarily with her show more daughter and son-in-law while her broken hip heals. But the ramifications from her accident spread far beyond her immediate family. When her daughter Rose is forced to cancel her trip accompanying her employer, Lord Henry Peters, an ageing historian, he asks his niece Marian to accompany him instead, which forces her to text a cancellation to her married lover that is picked up by his wife. And without the ever efficient Rose, the lecture notes are forgotten, forcing Lord Peters to confront the signs of his own ageing as he stumbles through a talk that would once have been child's play for him. And Charlotte's introduction of an Eastern European immigrant to her daughter's house, as she continues to give the reading lessons which she has previously provided in class, has implications for Rose's own future.
Altogether a very good read: in detailing the different reactions of Charlotte and Lord Peters to the aging process it seems to provide a wonderful insight into the realities of ageing. I think that I'll be going back to read more Penelope Lively in the near future. show less
Charlotte, an intensely independent seventy-something widow, is mugged on the street, breaking her hip, and must live with her daughter, Rose, while she recovers. This book is a humorous and poignant character study of seven lives impacted by this single event. It is chaos theory in novel form, or a sequence of unintended consequences. The author employs an understated plot and well-developed characters. She brings the intertwined storylines together in a satisfying ending.
The characters are the highlight. In addition to Charlotte and Rose, we have:
- Lord Peters an aging historian with a rather pompous attitude that adds to the amusement
- Lord Peters’ niece, Marion, an interior designer having an affair with a married man
- Jeremy, show more the married man, and his wife, Ruth, whom he hopes to keep from divorcing him
- Anton, Charlotte’s student, an eastern European immigrant learning English to get a better job
Supporting characters augment the humor, such as the young academic who plays up to Lord Peters’ ego to further his own career. Each has a distinctive personality. I felt like I knew them personally by the end of the book. I am impressed by the author’s skill in deftly designing their interplay. This is the first book I have read by Penelope Lively. I enjoyed it tremendously and will be reading more of her works.
4.5 show less
The characters are the highlight. In addition to Charlotte and Rose, we have:
- Lord Peters an aging historian with a rather pompous attitude that adds to the amusement
- Lord Peters’ niece, Marion, an interior designer having an affair with a married man
- Jeremy, show more the married man, and his wife, Ruth, whom he hopes to keep from divorcing him
- Anton, Charlotte’s student, an eastern European immigrant learning English to get a better job
Supporting characters augment the humor, such as the young academic who plays up to Lord Peters’ ego to further his own career. Each has a distinctive personality. I felt like I knew them personally by the end of the book. I am impressed by the author’s skill in deftly designing their interplay. This is the first book I have read by Penelope Lively. I enjoyed it tremendously and will be reading more of her works.
4.5 show less
Penelope Lively cleverly uses the Butterfly effect to show the consequences of one random incident on a disparate range of characters.
Charlotte the elderly victim of a mugging reminisces on life and the effect of ageing. Higher on the social strata is Henry, who though even older and lacking self-awareness, also comes to feel his influence waning and his reputation slide as the years pass.
Though the primary theme is ageing this book is about so much more. In keeping with modern fiction the pace is quite fast as action switches between the character groupings but the writing throughout is elegant.
This book is a delight. Who better than Penelope Lively to express what is ahead for us without sentimentality but leaving much scope for show more human strength. show less
Charlotte the elderly victim of a mugging reminisces on life and the effect of ageing. Higher on the social strata is Henry, who though even older and lacking self-awareness, also comes to feel his influence waning and his reputation slide as the years pass.
Though the primary theme is ageing this book is about so much more. In keeping with modern fiction the pace is quite fast as action switches between the character groupings but the writing throughout is elegant.
This book is a delight. Who better than Penelope Lively to express what is ahead for us without sentimentality but leaving much scope for show more human strength. show less
Growing up, my friends and I used to muse on how everyday events influence the course of our lives. It was mostly silly: “If I hadn’t come outside this afternoon, I wouldn’t have seen you, and we wouldn’t have gone swimming, and my whole life would be different.” In How it all Began, Penelope Lively takes a more serious look at the ripple effect of one life event: the mugging of Charlotte Rainsford. The injuries sustained in the assault force Charlotte to move in with her daughter, Rose, during her recovery. Rose is unable to go on a business trip with her boss Henry, so he asks his niece Marion to accompany him. The business trip changes Marion’s life both personally and professionally. Charlotte’s quest for fulfilment show more during her convalescence has an unexpected impact on Rose. And so on.
I loved both the plot device and the character development in this novel. I was fascinated by the far-reaching impact of Charlotte’s situation, reaching people completely unknown to her (e.g., Marion, her married lover Jeremy, and Jeremy’s family). Naturally some characters were more likeable and sympathetic than others, but all were complex, fully-developed human beings. Most were confronted with moral dilemmas, causing me to ponder how I would respond in a similar situation. Rose’s story struck the strongest emotional chord, perhaps because we are about the same age, and I am equally prone to taking stock of my first half-century and looking ahead to the rest of my life.
This is my second Penelope Lively novel, and has made me a true fan. I will be reading more of her work. show less
I loved both the plot device and the character development in this novel. I was fascinated by the far-reaching impact of Charlotte’s situation, reaching people completely unknown to her (e.g., Marion, her married lover Jeremy, and Jeremy’s family). Naturally some characters were more likeable and sympathetic than others, but all were complex, fully-developed human beings. Most were confronted with moral dilemmas, causing me to ponder how I would respond in a similar situation. Rose’s story struck the strongest emotional chord, perhaps because we are about the same age, and I am equally prone to taking stock of my first half-century and looking ahead to the rest of my life.
This is my second Penelope Lively novel, and has made me a true fan. I will be reading more of her work. show less
Charlotte, an intensely independent seventy-something widow, is mugged on the street, breaking her hip, and must live with her daughter, Rose, while she recovers. This book is a humorous and poignant character study of seven lives impacted by this single event. It is chaos theory in novel form, or a sequence of unintended consequences. The author employs an understated plot and well-developed characters. She brings the intertwined storylines together in a satisfying ending.
The characters are the highlight. In addition to Charlotte and Rose, we have:
- Lord Peters an aging historian with a rather pompous attitude that adds to the amusement
- Lord Peters’ niece, Marion, an interior designer having an affair with a married man
- Jeremy, show more the married man, and his wife, Ruth, whom he hopes to keep from divorcing him
- Anton, Charlotte’s student, an eastern European immigrant learning English to get a better job
Supporting characters augment the humor, such as the young academic who plays up to Lord Peters’ ego to further his own career. Each has a distinctive personality. I felt like I knew them personally by the end of the book. I am impressed by the author’s skill in deftly designing their interplay. This is the first book I have read by Penelope Lively. I enjoyed it tremendously and will be reading more of her works.
4.5 show less
The characters are the highlight. In addition to Charlotte and Rose, we have:
- Lord Peters an aging historian with a rather pompous attitude that adds to the amusement
- Lord Peters’ niece, Marion, an interior designer having an affair with a married man
- Jeremy, show more the married man, and his wife, Ruth, whom he hopes to keep from divorcing him
- Anton, Charlotte’s student, an eastern European immigrant learning English to get a better job
Supporting characters augment the humor, such as the young academic who plays up to Lord Peters’ ego to further his own career. Each has a distinctive personality. I felt like I knew them personally by the end of the book. I am impressed by the author’s skill in deftly designing their interplay. This is the first book I have read by Penelope Lively. I enjoyed it tremendously and will be reading more of her works.
4.5 show less
Fast paced, breezy novel about the knock-on effects of a mugging. Lively's characters are well-drawn and engaging, and very three dimensional. The dialogue is crisp and the narration is not heavy-handed. There are some rather profound meditations on old age, some other profound meditations on chaos and storytelling, and how different versions of our old selves meld into the self we are now. It's lighthearted, but it isn't.
66/2020 I wasn't expecting this novel, a tragicomedy of manners, to be so witty and satirical. Penelope Lively's writing is well formed and I didn't notice until I began this review that the whole story is in the often disparaged present tense omniscient. Observations of each character are telling. The skilfully constructed plot revolves around Charlotte who is mugged, apparently by the butterfly effect, and whose subsequences have consequences rippling out through her social support systems, both give and take, to effect other people who have never and will never meet her.
Reading notes
Eminent but ageing historian Henry knows about the history of UK politics but can't relate this to the democratic society in which he lives and where, show more we're supposed to believe, ordinary voters (on pg 33 literally the man on the omnibus) determine the course of politics. Henry only knows his history through Great White English Men and has no understanding of contemporary English society shaped by the two-way influences of Empire / Commonwealth, and European Communities / European Union because that history is deemed irrelevant by the ruling classes of which Henry is a product. Henry feels "disorientated" because he can't effectively "judge" the social status of his fellow bus passengers or put them in their place in relation to his perceptions of himself. He is contrasted with Charlotte who, in spite of the infirmities of ageing, continues to immerse herself in her surrounding society, which is to her own and other people's benefit.
Eternally relevant: "History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion."
Charlotte: "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."
Identity is made of memories, both our own and other people's: "What we add up to, in the end, is a handful of images, apparently unrelated and unselected. Chaos, you would think, except that it is the chaos that makes each of us a person. Identity, it is called in professional speak." show less
Reading notes
Eminent but ageing historian Henry knows about the history of UK politics but can't relate this to the democratic society in which he lives and where, show more we're supposed to believe, ordinary voters (on pg 33 literally the man on the omnibus) determine the course of politics. Henry only knows his history through Great White English Men and has no understanding of contemporary English society shaped by the two-way influences of Empire / Commonwealth, and European Communities / European Union because that history is deemed irrelevant by the ruling classes of which Henry is a product. Henry feels "disorientated" because he can't effectively "judge" the social status of his fellow bus passengers or put them in their place in relation to his perceptions of himself. He is contrasted with Charlotte who, in spite of the infirmities of ageing, continues to immerse herself in her surrounding society, which is to her own and other people's benefit.
Eternally relevant: "History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion."
Charlotte: "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."
Identity is made of memories, both our own and other people's: "What we add up to, in the end, is a handful of images, apparently unrelated and unselected. Chaos, you would think, except that it is the chaos that makes each of us a person. Identity, it is called in professional speak." show less
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How It All Began begins in uncharacteristically violent fashion: "The pavement rises up and hits her. Slams into her face, drives the lower rim of her glasses into her cheek." Charlotte, a retired schoolteacher in her late 70s, finds that she has been mugged and relieved of her house keys, bank cards and £60 in cash. As a reader, you share her sense of shock and bewilderment – after all, show more one might expect to be reasonably safe from street crime in a Penelope Lively novel; though the book introduces a number of elements you wouldn't ordinarily expect to find, including East European immigrants, chocolate cream frappuccinos and errant text messages used as a plot device.
It soon becomes apparent that being knocked down has a knock-on effect. Charlotte is forced to move in with her daughter Rose while she recuperates, which means that Rose is unable to accompany her employer, Lord Peters, to receive an honorary doctorate in Manchester. His Lordship's niece, an interior designer named Marion, goes with her uncle instead, though a text explaining her absence is intercepted by the wife of her lover, thus hastening the demise of their marriage. It all unfolds with the inescapable logic of a well-oiled farce, though every so often Lively's authorial voice intrudes to comment on the domino-toppling effect: "Thus have various lives collided, the human version of a motorway shunt, and the rogue white van that slammed on the brakes is miles away, offstage, impervious."
The novel contains some of Lively's funniest and most enjoyable character studies, not least the pompous bubble of self-esteem that is the academic relic Lord Peters; once a leading authority on Walpole, he now worries that "the 18th century has passed him by", and hopes to re-establish his reputation with a David Starkey-style television series. Lively is deliciously intolerant of interior designers – Marion's paramour, who runs a reclamation yard, is painted as little more than an jumped-up junk merchant; while Marion's business is principally based on the resale of "a cargo of interior adornments forever on the move, filtering from one mansion flat or bijou Chelsea terrace house to another".
Yet the most telling relationship is that which develops between the comfortably married Rose and Anton, an economic migrant who comes to visit Charlotte for literacy lessons. Rose surprises herself by developing an affection for this timid man with soulful eyes and fractured English, but sensibly limits the relationship to wistful strolls round London parks and weekend assignations in Starbucks.
Anton, a trained accountant, has had to accept work on a building site while struggling to master the language. Charlotte achieves a breakthrough by throwing away the standard uninspiring teaching materials and presenting him with a copy of Where the Wild Things Are. "I am like child," he says, happily. "Child learn because he is interested … Story go always forward – this happen, then this. That is what we want. We want to know how it happen, what comes next. How one thing make happen another."
It can only be a matter of time before Anton graduates from Maurice Sendak to Penelope Lively novels, as she remains a sublime storyteller – the opening sentence has us riveted with curiosity as to what will happen next. Yet she also keeps us consistently aware of the nature of the illusion. "So that was the story," she concludes, "so capriciously triggered because something happened to Charlotte in the street one day. But of course this is not the end of the story … These stories do not end, but spin away from one another, each on its own course." In other words, they momentarily collide and separate to form the kind of narrative at which Lively excels: the untidy, unpredictable one in which everyone lives ambivalently ever after. show less
It soon becomes apparent that being knocked down has a knock-on effect. Charlotte is forced to move in with her daughter Rose while she recuperates, which means that Rose is unable to accompany her employer, Lord Peters, to receive an honorary doctorate in Manchester. His Lordship's niece, an interior designer named Marion, goes with her uncle instead, though a text explaining her absence is intercepted by the wife of her lover, thus hastening the demise of their marriage. It all unfolds with the inescapable logic of a well-oiled farce, though every so often Lively's authorial voice intrudes to comment on the domino-toppling effect: "Thus have various lives collided, the human version of a motorway shunt, and the rogue white van that slammed on the brakes is miles away, offstage, impervious."
The novel contains some of Lively's funniest and most enjoyable character studies, not least the pompous bubble of self-esteem that is the academic relic Lord Peters; once a leading authority on Walpole, he now worries that "the 18th century has passed him by", and hopes to re-establish his reputation with a David Starkey-style television series. Lively is deliciously intolerant of interior designers – Marion's paramour, who runs a reclamation yard, is painted as little more than an jumped-up junk merchant; while Marion's business is principally based on the resale of "a cargo of interior adornments forever on the move, filtering from one mansion flat or bijou Chelsea terrace house to another".
Yet the most telling relationship is that which develops between the comfortably married Rose and Anton, an economic migrant who comes to visit Charlotte for literacy lessons. Rose surprises herself by developing an affection for this timid man with soulful eyes and fractured English, but sensibly limits the relationship to wistful strolls round London parks and weekend assignations in Starbucks.
Anton, a trained accountant, has had to accept work on a building site while struggling to master the language. Charlotte achieves a breakthrough by throwing away the standard uninspiring teaching materials and presenting him with a copy of Where the Wild Things Are. "I am like child," he says, happily. "Child learn because he is interested … Story go always forward – this happen, then this. That is what we want. We want to know how it happen, what comes next. How one thing make happen another."
It can only be a matter of time before Anton graduates from Maurice Sendak to Penelope Lively novels, as she remains a sublime storyteller – the opening sentence has us riveted with curiosity as to what will happen next. Yet she also keeps us consistently aware of the nature of the illusion. "So that was the story," she concludes, "so capriciously triggered because something happened to Charlotte in the street one day. But of course this is not the end of the story … These stories do not end, but spin away from one another, each on its own course." In other words, they momentarily collide and separate to form the kind of narrative at which Lively excels: the untidy, unpredictable one in which everyone lives ambivalently ever after. show less
added by VivienneR
*Starred Review* The ruling vision of master British novelist Lively's latest is the Butterfly Effect, which stipulates that a very small perturbation can radically alter the course of events. The catalyst here is a London mugging that leaves Charlotte, a passionate reader and former English teacher become adult literacy tutor, with a broken hip. She moves in with her married daughter, Rose, show more to recuperate. Rose works for Henry, a lord and once-prominent historian, whose ego is as robust as ever but whose mind is faltering. With Rose out helping her mother, Henry prevails upon his niece, Marion, an interior designer, to accompany him out of town, where she meets a too-good-to-be-true client. When she texts her lover, to postpone a rendezvous, his wife intercepts the message. Charlotte begins tutoring Anton, who affirms her ardor for language and awakens Rose out of her smothering stoicism. Throughout this brilliantly choreographed and poignant chain-reaction comedy of chance and change, Lively shrewdly elucidates the nature of history, the tunnel-visioning of pain and age, and the abiding illumination of reading, which so profoundly nourishes the mind and spirit.-- show less
added by kthomp25
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Author Information
73+ Works 14,523 Members
Penelope Lively has written over 18 books for children, and over 15 titles for adults, distinguishing herself on both levels. Among the awards she has received are the coveted Booker Prize for the adult novel "Moon Tiger" (1987) and the Carnegie Medal for the highly acclaimed juvenile work, "The Ghost of Thomas Kempe" (1973). In Lively's writing, show more for both adults and children, the recurrent theme is interpreting the past through exploring the function of memory. "My particular preoccupation as a writer is with memory. Both with memory in the historical sense and memory in the personal sense." Beginning her writing career in the early 1970's, Lively wrote exclusively for children for over a decade. Because children have limited memories, devices were used to explore their perceptions of the past, such as ghosts in "Uninvited Ghosts and Other Stories" (1985), and a sampler in "A Stitch in Time' (1976). Lively's first adult novel, "The Road to Lichfield" (1977) was the result of turning to an older audience when she felt inspiration running out. Her adult novels include "Passing On" (1995), the story of a mother's legacy to her children and 'Oleander, Jacarandi: A Childhood Perceived' (1994) which is a memoir of Lively's childhood. Penelope (Low) Lively, born March 17, 1933 in Cairo, Egypt, had a most unusual childhood. She grew up in Cairo with no formal education until age 12, when her family put her in boarding school in England. After earning a B.A. in history at Oxford in 1955, she married Jack Lively, a university professor, whom she calls her most useful critic. They have a son and a daughter, Adam and Josephine. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- How It All Began
- Original title
- How It All Began
- Original publication date
- 2011-11-03
- People/Characters
- Charlotte Rainsford; Rose Donovan; Henry Peters; Marion Clark; Jeremy Dalton; Stella Dalton (show all 8); George Harrington; Paul Newsome
- Important places
- London, England, UK
- Epigraph
- The Butterfly Effect was the reason. For small pieces of weather — and to a global forecaster small can mean thunderstorms and blizzards — any prediction deteriorates rapidly. Errors and uncertainties multiply, cascading ... (show all)upward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continent-size eddies that only satellites can see. — James Gleick, Chaos, 1998
- Dedication
- To Rachel and Izzy
- First words
- The pavement rises up and hits her.
- Quotations
- History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant, but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion.
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 mu... (show all)ch 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.
You slide, in old age, into a state of perpetual diffidence, of unspoken apology. You walk more slowly than normal people. You are obliged to say 'what?' too often, others have to give up their seat on the bus to you, on trai... (show all)n journeys you must ask for help with your absurdly small and light case. There is a void somewhere in your head into which tip the most familiar names [....] You can use a computer, just about, and cope with a mobile, but with such slow deliberation that the watching young are wincing.
What we add up to, in the end, is a handful of images, apparently unrelated and unselected. Chaos, you would think, except that it is the chaos that makes each of us a person. Identity, it is called in professional speak.
Old age is not for wimps. Broken hip is definitely not for wimps.... Of course before the hip there was the knee, and the back, but that was mere degeneration ... And the cataracts. And those twinges in the left shoulder and ... (show all)the varicose veins and the phlebitis and having to get up at least once every night to pee and the fits of irritation at people who leave inaudible messages on the answerphone.... For years, now, pain has been a constant companion ... The twilight years ... We all avert our eyes, and then - wham! - you're in there too, wondering how the hell this can have happened.
Old age is an insult. Old age is a slap in the face. It sabotages a fine mind ... Some paralysis of the brain occurs.... It's a suffocation of the intellect.
The whole business of age , what happens, the way in which a person is pushed into another incarnation, becomes a different version of themselves. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Demonstrating that no man is an island, even a fourteen-year-old with behavioural problems.
- Original language
- English
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