Earlier in the year I read and enjoyed Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively so when I saw How It All Began in my local library last week I thought I would give it a go. When I got home with it I was surprised to discover that it was published in 2011, I don’t read an awful lot of modern fiction nor do I keep as up to date with new publications as I should do. This is a bookish book as Charlotte, although past retiring age, is now teaching adult students to read, so there are plenty of old favourites mentioned.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this one so much so that I found myself googling Lively to see how old she is. I know that is probably terribly ageist of me but it does sometimes happen that people stick at things too long instead of bowing out gracefully when they’ve run out of ideas or just lost the ability to write as well as they once did. Lively just seems to get better with old age, or should I say – maturity. She was born in 1933 so she could be said to be ‘getting on a bit’ but honestly, you’d never think it.

How It All Began begins with Charlotte, a lady probably about the same age as the author, falling down in the street, as it says in the book – the pavement rises up and hits her. It turns out that Charlotte has been mugged and is hospitalized with a broken hip. The story is about how this incident has a knock on effect for so many people, beginning with Charlotte’s daughter Rose and her husband Gerry who look after her in their home until she’s well enough to live on her own again.

Then there’s Anton, Jeremy, Stella, Marion, Henry and Mark, most of whom only know Charlotte vaguely, if at all. But their lives are changed by her temporary incapacity. It’s the Butterfly Effect of chaos theory in action but all the strands of the storyline are beautifuly tied up, which is a plus for me, I’m not keen when characters just fizzle out and are left dangling, as some writers do.

Another plus is that just about all of the characters are likeable, well there’s maybe one who is a bit of a rotter, nobody is perfect of course but I do hate books which have no likeable characters in them at all, it’s impossible to like a book if you don’t care about the people in it.

Moon Tiger won the Booker prize way back in 1987 and I think this book has been nominated for at least one literary prize.