So Many Ways to Begin
A Novel
گزارش تخلف
کتاب های مرتبط
- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
- دیدگاه کاربران
نقد و بررسی
October 2, 2006
David Carter grows up happy in post-WWII Coventry, England, where he combs bomb sites for things to collect and dreams of one day running his own museum. He lands a job at a local museum and, at age 22, learns from a mentally ill family friend that he was adopted as an infant. Irate and bewildered, David struggles to comprehend "how such a lie had been incorporated into official history" as he begins his adult life. His marriage to Eleanor provides some direction, but the couple is often rudderless, and McGregor (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
) charts with a calculated dreariness David's frustrated attempts to locate his birth mother, Eleanor's terrible depressions, their professional letdowns, a few moments of happiness and the way "it wasn't what they'd imagined, this life." Once retired, David is introduced to the Internet, which yields a promising lead in his quest to find his birth mother. Melancholy permeates every page; readers looking for an earnest downer can't go wrong.
October 15, 2006
The questionable reality and emotional truth behind artifacts propel this story of a British mans search for his past. David Carter, a museum curator fascinated with history and objects, discovers in his mid-twenties that he is an adopted orphan and becomes consumed with discovering his birth parents. The narrative traces the events of his life, re-created around descriptions of objects he and family members have preserved. While researching in Aberdeen, Scotland, he meets and falls in love with Eleanor, who is determined, despite her working-class familys lack of support, to graduate from college. Readers follow their married years as they raise a daughter and cope with Eleanors depressions and Davids relations with a female coworker. It is only after their daughter leaves for college that David and Eleanor track down a woman in Ireland who may be Davids birth mother. In this elegantly written novel, McGregor ("If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things") focuses on the interpersonal and the emotional, successfully dramatizing the impact of events on peoples lives. Recommended for larger fiction collections."Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta"
Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
دیدگاه کاربران