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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The butterfly effect is a metaphor used in the study of chaos theory to explain how a small action in a remote part of a system can have large effects far from the source. That’s the phenomena that Penelope Lively examines to great delight in How It All Began.
An elderly woman is mugged. She falls, breaks her hip, is forced to move in with her daughter and son-in-law while she recovers. And that particular flap of the butterfly’s wings leads into consequences in a multitude of lives, near and far.
Lively has taken a common premise — the effect of chance in all of our lives — and deftly turned out a uniquely charming and thoughtful novel. Charlotte is that elderly crime victim, a widowed retired schoolteacher. Rose is her dutiful show more and loving daughter, who brings her mother into her home completely unaware of the emotional havoc that will be wrought. Charlotte herself remains oblivious to much of the havoc that will result, even in the lives of people neither Rose nor Charlotte have ever met. Marriages are destroyed and saved, romances go sour and blossom, careers are ended and begun, and all because a juvenile delinquent decided to assault a total stranger.
Lively’s writing lives up to her name. On the surface it is lighthearted, breezy, casual, but I found myself stopping again and again to mark passages that managed to capture truths that felt universal:
Charlotte knows herself to ride upon a great sea of words, of 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.
Charlotte, left alone for great swaths of the day, has plenty of time to think about her current circumstances:
You are on the edge of things now, clinging on to life’s outer rim. You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not — life has been lived but it is all still going on, in the mind, for better and for worse. But don’t imagine that anyone else wants to know about it; this narrative is personal, and mind you remember that.
Her injury brings her face-to-face with the reality of having lived seventy-seven years:
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 train 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. … When you were young yourself you were appropriately nice to old people, gave up your seat and so forth, but you never really thought about them. They were another species, their experience was unimaginable, and in any case it was irrelevant; you were not going there, or at least not for so long that there was no need to consider it.
Balancing a light tone with some heavy philosophical musings isn't easy, but Lively manages to walk the tightrope without a wobble. I read this book as part of the British Author Challenge in the 75 Book Challenge group, where Lively was one of two authors featured in January. How It All Began was a splendid introduction to the work of this venerable British writer. show less
An elderly woman is mugged. She falls, breaks her hip, is forced to move in with her daughter and son-in-law while she recovers. And that particular flap of the butterfly’s wings leads into consequences in a multitude of lives, near and far.
Lively has taken a common premise — the effect of chance in all of our lives — and deftly turned out a uniquely charming and thoughtful novel. Charlotte is that elderly crime victim, a widowed retired schoolteacher. Rose is her dutiful show more and loving daughter, who brings her mother into her home completely unaware of the emotional havoc that will be wrought. Charlotte herself remains oblivious to much of the havoc that will result, even in the lives of people neither Rose nor Charlotte have ever met. Marriages are destroyed and saved, romances go sour and blossom, careers are ended and begun, and all because a juvenile delinquent decided to assault a total stranger.
Lively’s writing lives up to her name. On the surface it is lighthearted, breezy, casual, but I found myself stopping again and again to mark passages that managed to capture truths that felt universal:
Charlotte knows herself to ride upon a great sea of words, of 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.
Charlotte, left alone for great swaths of the day, has plenty of time to think about her current circumstances:
You are on the edge of things now, clinging on to life’s outer rim. You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not — life has been lived but it is all still going on, in the mind, for better and for worse. But don’t imagine that anyone else wants to know about it; this narrative is personal, and mind you remember that.
Her injury brings her face-to-face with the reality of having lived seventy-seven years:
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 train 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. … When you were young yourself you were appropriately nice to old people, gave up your seat and so forth, but you never really thought about them. They were another species, their experience was unimaginable, and in any case it was irrelevant; you were not going there, or at least not for so long that there was no need to consider it.
Balancing a light tone with some heavy philosophical musings isn't easy, but Lively manages to walk the tightrope without a wobble. I read this book as part of the British Author Challenge in the 75 Book Challenge group, where Lively was one of two authors featured in January. How It All Began was a splendid introduction to the work of this venerable British writer. 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
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
17. How It All Began is perfect. Everybody run to the library or bookstore. Lively is a virtuoso, exploring chance, old age and stories in a gem of a book.
Each character is pitch perfect, with his or her distinct voice. Charlotte, at the beginning, after being mugged and setting off a chain of events that affect people she will never meet, ponders old age: "Twilight my foot -- roaring dawn of a new life, more like, the one you didn't know about. We all avert our eyes, and then -- wham! You're in there too, wondering how the hell this can have happened, and maybe it is an early circle of hell and here come the gleeful devils with their pitchforks ... Except that life goes on in parallel -- real life, good life with all its gifts and show more graces. My species tulips and blue tits on the bird feeder and a new book to look forward to this evening and Rose ringing up..."
This is Charlotte. She breaks a hip during the mugging and has to go to stay with her daughter, Rose, to recover. I don't want to retell this wonderful story. Each person in the story is affected by this mugger -- a random event that no one sees coming. Charlotte discusses stories with one of her students. We always expect a beginning, a middle and an ending, with cause and effect. Yet, life is not like that: "What we all 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."
It's hard to do this book justice. Highly recommended. show less
Each character is pitch perfect, with his or her distinct voice. Charlotte, at the beginning, after being mugged and setting off a chain of events that affect people she will never meet, ponders old age: "Twilight my foot -- roaring dawn of a new life, more like, the one you didn't know about. We all avert our eyes, and then -- wham! You're in there too, wondering how the hell this can have happened, and maybe it is an early circle of hell and here come the gleeful devils with their pitchforks ... Except that life goes on in parallel -- real life, good life with all its gifts and show more graces. My species tulips and blue tits on the bird feeder and a new book to look forward to this evening and Rose ringing up..."
This is Charlotte. She breaks a hip during the mugging and has to go to stay with her daughter, Rose, to recover. I don't want to retell this wonderful story. Each person in the story is affected by this mugger -- a random event that no one sees coming. Charlotte discusses stories with one of her students. We always expect a beginning, a middle and an ending, with cause and effect. Yet, life is not like that: "What we all 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."
It's hard to do this book justice. Highly recommended. 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 14,503 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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