Introduction

"McGregor is a brilliant prose stylist, and here he excels at making … the ordinary seem extraordinary."-Sunday Times (UK )

David Carter has always been a collector. Born at the end of World War II to a loving family, he grew up salvaging treasures from bomb sites in Coventry, building miniature museums to preserve histories and tell stories about his past. David eventually lands his dream job as a curator at the Coventry Museum, and he even meets his dream girl: Eleanor, an aspiring geologist from Aberdeen, Scotland. As they fall in love, David and Eleanor’s future seems limitless.

But David’s tidy world quickly falls apart. His mother’s best friend, succumbing to senility, innocently mentions that David was adopted—his real mother was a young Irish girl who disappeared right after his birth. David’s and Eleanor’s lives unravel in the wake of this revelation. Eleanor leaves Scotland for good, and the radical break from her family threatens her sanity. David is almost lured into an affair with a co-worker, and he barely escapes with his life. As David and Eleanor settle into compromised versions of their dream lives, they raise a daughter who will eventually leave them, just as they once left their own families. As David learns to live his life rather than to curate it, he slowly comes to terms with all that is unknowable in the past, and all that is insecure in the future.

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Excerpt

They came in the morning, early, walking with the others along tracks and lanes and roads, across fields, down the long low hills which led to the slow pull of the river, down to the open gateways in the city walls, the hours and days of walking showing in the slow shift of their bodies, their breath streaming above them in the cold morning air as the night fell away at their backs. They came quietly, the swish of dew-wet grasses brushing against their ankles, the pat and splash of the muddy ground beneath their feet, the coughs and murmurs of rising conversation as the same few phrases were passed back along the lines. Here we are now. Nearly there. Just to the bottom of the hill and then we'll sit down. Cigarettes were lit, hundreds of cigarettes, thin leathery fingers expertly rolling a pinch of tobacco into a lick of paper without losing a step. Cigarettes were cadged, offered, shared, passed down to the nervous young hands eager for that first acrid taste of adulthood, cupping a mouthful of it in the windshield of their open fists in imitation of fathers and uncles and older brothers, coughing as it burnt down into their untested young lungs, the spluttered-out spoke twisting upwards and mingling with their cold couded breath as they made their way between flowering hawthorn hedges and cowslip-heavy banks, down towards the city walls. They wore suits, of a kind, all of them: woollen waistcoats and well knotted hankerchiefs, thick tweed jackets with worn elbows and cuffs, moleskin trousers with frayed seams tucked into the tops of their boots. The younger ones carried bundles of clothes, brown paper parcels fastened with string, slung across their shoulders or clasped to their chests, held tightly in their damp nervous hands as they started to gather pace, pulled down the hill by the sight of the city, by their eagerness to be first and by the impatience of the men and the boys pressing in from behind; still foggy from sleep, still aching from the long walk the day before, but forgetting all that as they came to their journey's end.

From the top of the hill, where others were only now beginning that last long downward traipse, the city looked quiet and still, wrapped in a pale May morning mist, weighted with the same brooding promise that cities have always held when glimpsed from a distance like this, the same magnetic pull of hopes and opportunities. But as those first men and boys came into the city, their boots beginning to stamp and echo across the cobbled ground, windows were opened and curtains pulled back, and the city began to wake. Sleepy children peered from low upstairs windows, the hushed chatter and the rumbling of feet signalling the start of the day they'd been looking forward to, calling to each other and pulling faces at the children in the houses across the street. Landlords opened the doors and shutters of their bars, sweeping the floors and standing in the doorways with brooms in their hands to watch their customers arrive. Stallholders finished preparing their pitches around the edges of the square, keeping an eye on the small group of guards by the steps of the new town hall. And from eachend of the long square, from the road leading in from the bridge to the east, from the gateway under the lodge to the west, from the road winding out along the river to the south, the army of workers appeared, hurrying on with the growing excitement of arrival, calling greetings to friends not seen for the past six months, looking around for others yet to arrive, asking after health, and families, and wives. And the crowd of people in the square grew bigger, and noisier, and fathers began to lay hands on the shoulders of their youngest sons, keeping them close, wary of letting them drift away too soon, listening to the snatches of conversation echo back and forth, looking out for the farmers and foremen to start to appear, waiting for the business of the day to begin.

Maryt Friel stood with her father and brothers, watching, her youngest brother Tommy clutching her hand. You okay there, Tommy? she whispered down to him. He looked up at her, nodding, a look of annoyance on his young face, and pulled his hand away.

Soon, as if some unseen signal, deals began to be made all over the square. You looking for work, son? the smartly dressed men would say, glancing down. How much you after? And the older boys, the ones who knew their price, or the ones who could say they were experienced, stronger, would get more work done, tried their luck with eight, nine, ten pounds, while the younger ones, who knew no better or could ask for no more, said seven or six as they'd been told. Deals were made with a terse nod and a handing over of the brown paper packages, an instruction to meet back there in the afternoon, sometimes with a shilling or two to keep the boy busy for the day, sometimes not; sometimes the father taken for drinks to smooth over the awkwardness of the scene, sometimes not.

This was the first time Mary had been to town for the hiring fair. She'd only ever watched her father setting off with her brothers before; stood in the low doorway to wave them goodbye, her sister Cathy beside her, Tommy holding on to both their hands, their mother turning away before the boys got out of sight and saying no time to be standing around all day now. She'd had an idea about what it would be like from hearing her father those evenings come back home alone; she and Cathy lying in bed listening while he talked in a low voice to their mother by the last few turfs of the fading fire. But she hadn't been expecting quite so many people, or so much noise, or the way her father would stare sternly straight ahead when a gentleman approached him and said your boy looking for a job?

They left the square as soon as the price had been agreed, telling Tommy to be good, to work hard and do what the man said, and meet them back here at the next fair day in six months' time. They walked down towards the river, Mary, her father, her two older brothers who were past the age of hiring now, out to the docks to catch the boat across to England. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

These discussion questions are designed to enhance your group’s conversation about So Many Ways to Begin, a meditative novel about the limits of self-discovery within a family full of secrets.

1. So Many Ways to Begin opens with a prologue about Mary Friel’s ill-fated journey from Ireland to Hampstead. How does this prologue set the scene for the novel to come? What does Mary Friel’s story reveal about David Carter’s story, and what does it conceal?

2. The novel’s chapters are organized by artifacts within David’s collection. How do these artifacts shape the story of David’s life? Which of these relics gives the fullest picture of a stage of David’s life? To whom does David imagine telling his story through these objects?

3. Consider the relationship between David and Dorothy. Why does Dorothy insist to Julia that when David was a baby, “I couldn’t take my eyes off him; I couldn’t put him down for more than a minute” (31)? When Dorothy explains in her letter to David, “I chose to keep you” (343), how does that clarify her feelings for him? What pieces of their shared history has David neglected in his search for family?

4. Discuss David’s lifelong fascination with collecting and curating objects. Why is he drawn to objects that say, “This is some small piece of where I began” (34)? How does David’s urge to collect relate to the uncertainty of his origins?

5. Consider the setting of the novel: Coventry, England, from 1943 to 2000. How does Coventry look and feel in the novel? How does the town grow and change in David’s lifetime?

6. As Aunt Julia teaches young David to dance, she reminisces about her brief marriage to Major William Pearson during World War II. Why does Julia describe her courtship and marriage as taking place over a single dance? What does Julia’s story imply about the workings of memory and mourning?

7. “I’m going to be a geologist,” Eleanor tells David when they meet (68). How do Eleanor’s career aspirations compare to David’s? Where do their areas of study overlap and diverge?

8. Julia, Dorothy, and David all cope with romances fraught with separations, whether due to war, death, or distant borders. How does each character handle a long-distance romance? Which love stories turn out well, and which are doomed to sadness?

9. Discuss the scene in which Aunt Julia tells David the story of his birth. How does the secret come to light? How does David handle this moment of revelation, and how does Dorothy? What regrets do David and Dorothy express when the truth comes out, and how do they eventually reconcile?

10. Consider Eleanor’s relationship with her parents, Ivy and Stewart. What are the roots of the conflict between Ivy and Eleanor? What is Stewart’s role within this tense household? How does Eleanor’s family history influence her relationship with her daughter, Kate, which David calls “uneventful” (316)?

11. When David starts searching for his birth mother, “He discovered that history’s secrets are not always easily found, that all the archives in the world weren’t enough when he didn’t even know who or what he was looking for, or where he should be looking” (128). Discuss the phases of David’s search for Mary Friel. Which clues help David in his search, and which lead him down the wrong path? How does the Internet change the direction of his quest?

12. As David reels from learning the secret of his birth, he believes that Eleanor “doesn’t keep any secrets from” him (153). Does Eleanor seem to divulge everything to David? Or might she keep some secrets of her own? Explain.

13. Consider David’s career path at Coventry Museum, from his beginnings as a junior curatorial assistant in 1964 to his layoff in 1986. What career goals does David have as a young man? How does he handle career setbacks, including Anna’s promotion and his layoff?

14. David never tells Eleanor the secret of his dangerous entanglement with Anna and Chris. What is the impact of the secret upon David and Eleanor’s marriage? Does keeping a secret of his own help David understand Dorothy’s secrets? Why or why not?

15. Consider David and Eleanor’s trip to Donegal to meet Mary Friel. What changes when Mary tells David, “Most girls would have given false names to the nurses, you know” (359)? Why does this false name end David’s search? How does his lovemaking with Eleanor in the novel’s final scene suggest another kind of beginning?

16. Discuss the meaning of the title So Many Ways to Begin. What various possibilities of beginnings does the novel put forth? When does the author propose multiple beginnings, and why? What ending does the novel also explore?

Suggested reading
Jon McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things; Ian McEwan, Solar and On Chesil Beach; John Banville, The Sea; David Nicholls, One Day; W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz; Nicole Krauss, Great House; David Mitchell, Black Swan Green; Maile Meloy, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It; Ron Currie Jr., Everything Matters!; J. M. Coetzee, Summertime.

Jon McGregor lives in Nottingham, England. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Times Young Writer Award, and won the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Awards. So Many Ways to Begin was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent novel is Even the Dogs.

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