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How It All Began
- Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
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Publisher's summary
A vibrant new novel from Penelope Lively - a wry, wise story about the surprising ways lives intersect.
When Charlotte Rainsford, a retired schoolteacher, is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike. A marriage unravels after an illicit love affair is revealed through an errant cell phone message; a posh yet financially strapped interior designer meets a business partner who might prove too good to be true; an old-guard historian tries to recapture his youthful vigor with an ill-conceived idea for a TV miniseries; and a middle-aged central European immigrant learns to speak English and reinvents his life with the assistance of some new friends.
Through a richly conceived and colorful cast of characters, Penelope Lively explores the powerful role of chance in people's lives and deftly illustrates how our paths can be altered irrevocably by someone we will never even meet. Brought to life in her hallmark graceful prose and full of keen insights into human nature, How It All Began is an engaging, contemporary tale that is sure to strike a chord with her legion of loyal fans as well as new readers. A writer of rare wisdom, elegance, and humor, Lively is a consummate storyteller whose gifts are on full display in this masterful work.
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- Molly-o
- 02-15-12
Wonderful and beautifully written
This was such a great surprise. I loved all the characters to the point of missing them when the novel was over and the story is compelling. I wouldn't miss this one if you want to have a good literary romp.
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7 people found this helpful
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- John S.
- 05-17-13
Wanted to like it more than I did
I had thought that this would be one of those six-degrees-of-separation deals, where the effects of the mugging ripple directly outward. Instead, it felt more as though the affected were a closed circle, some of whose members I did not care for much. Kellgren's accents were good, especially the mugging victim Charlotte, and Czech immigrant Anton. However, at other times, she spoke in a "plummy" voice which I found a bit irritating. Others' mileage may vary on this one, but my experience was that it filled time, and not much else.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Butler
- 05-07-12
didn't finish because I couldn't stand the reader
I think I will read the book. I loved the story, wanted to finish it, but just could not take the reader. Every line sounded like a newscast or an announcement
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5 people found this helpful
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- Cristy
- 01-30-12
highly recommended!
Any additional comments?
This was full of both humor and insight. Wonderful characters, great plot, great fun. The book is rathah British in its outlook but still quite relevant for American listeners and readers. Katherine Kellgren does a fabulous job with all the character voices.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Tina
- 08-01-12
Light British fare
Light and easy reading, a thoughtful book about intersecting lives in London, with a bit of romance, a bit of humor, and some likable characters.
Warning: the narrator is a bit loud and shrill.
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3 people found this helpful
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- John
- 03-11-12
Wonderful novel, beautifully read
Where does How It All Began rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This is one of the most enjoyable books I have listened too this year.
What did you like best about this story?
The characters are fascinating, and the novel combines both an interesting story that captifates the attention with some fascinating reflections on age, love, memory, the changing times, and family relationships.
Which character – as performed by Katherine Kellgren – was your favorite?
All of the characters are well drawn, but the immigrant accountant is particularly well done, one can hear his English improve through the novel.
Any additional comments?
This is a book, in other words, that is easy to listen to and that grabs you from the first minutes, and yet has some real depth that sticks with you. First rate.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Deb
- 02-06-12
A wonderful cast of characters
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. The storyline and charcaters are complex yet familiar
Have you listened to any of Katherine Kellgren’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Not heard Katherine Kellgren before, but she gives life to the multiple characters.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Laura
- 01-30-12
Delightful listen!
Any additional comments?
Funny, sweet, excellent performance by Katherine Kellgren. Overall very enjoyable, relaxing and absorbing. Loved multiple story lines. Highly recommended.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Ruth Lambert
- 07-09-12
Clever and charming, never boring!
This book is based on the premise that a chance accident or other blow from the Universe (in this case, a mugging) has ripples that flow outward from the incident in an every-widening circle. It's an interesting idea, well presented in the form of a story with a wide cast of characters. I enjoyed the deft way this accomplished British author wove the overlapping stories into this narrative. ENJOY!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Dereka Smith
- 01-26-12
Superbly crafted.
I just gulped this book-- the writing was marvelous, the reader superb. The concept was developed with skill and humor. I lose traction on books fairly easily and often find popular writing to be contrived and inane but this book was everything one could hope-- except perhaps too short. I am going to go back and listen to all of the Penelope Lively titles that are available through Audible (and hope they add additional ones!)
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Memory and history have been Penelope Lively’s terrain in fiction over a career that has spanned five decades. But she has only rarely given listeners a glimpse into her influences and formative years. Dancing Fish and Ammonites traces the arc of Lively’s life, stretching from her early childhood in Cairo to boarding school in England to the sweeping social changes of Britain’s 20th century. She reflects on her early love of archeology, the fragments of the ancients that have accompanied her journey - including a sherd of Egyptian ceramic depicting dancing fish and ammonites found years ago on a Dorset beach.
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A most pleasant diversion
- By Amazon Customer on 02-21-15
By: Penelope Lively
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Moon Tiger
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she's carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt.
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stunning beauty
- By philip carr harris on 03-31-19
By: Penelope Lively
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Consequences
- A Novel
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Consequences is a love-story-times-three that opens on the eve of the Second World War, with a chance meeting in St. James' Park, London. Wholly in love, Lorna and Matt leave the city for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together is shattered when the war begins and by Matt's tragic death in action.
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I remember now why this is my favorite Lively
- By Thomas J. Otto on 06-26-15
By: Penelope Lively
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The Photograph
- A Novel
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Daniel Gerroll, Patricia Kalember
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Booker Prize¿winning novelist Penelope Lively's latest masterpiece opens with a snapshot: Kath, before her death, at an unknown gathering, holding hands with a man who is not her husband. The photograph is in an envelope marked "DON'T OPEN - DESTROY." But Kath's husband does not heed the warning, embarking on a journey of discovery that reveals a tight web of secrets within marriages, between sisters, and at the heart of an affair.
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good but sad
- By Rebecca on 09-15-06
By: Penelope Lively
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Life in the Garden
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Heather Lloyd
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom. Now in her 84th year, Lively writes, "To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time."
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Enjoyable Read
- By Figgs on 03-31-21
By: Penelope Lively
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Family Album
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In her 16th novel, Penelope Lively shows her extraordinary understanding of what makes us human as she delves into the mystery of family life.
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Our Family Members We Have Not Known
- By P. Carson on 07-10-10
By: Penelope Lively
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Dancing Fish and Ammonites
- A Memoir
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Kelly Birch
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Memory and history have been Penelope Lively’s terrain in fiction over a career that has spanned five decades. But she has only rarely given listeners a glimpse into her influences and formative years. Dancing Fish and Ammonites traces the arc of Lively’s life, stretching from her early childhood in Cairo to boarding school in England to the sweeping social changes of Britain’s 20th century. She reflects on her early love of archeology, the fragments of the ancients that have accompanied her journey - including a sherd of Egyptian ceramic depicting dancing fish and ammonites found years ago on a Dorset beach.
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A most pleasant diversion
- By Amazon Customer on 02-21-15
By: Penelope Lively
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The Stone Diaries
- By: Carol Shields, Penelope Lively - introduction
- Narrated by: Deborah Drakeford
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
By: Carol Shields, and others
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Cleopatra’s Sister
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Paleontologist Howard Beamish is flying to Nairobi when his plane is forced to land in Callimbia. Journalist Lucy Faulkner, on assignment to write a travel piece for a Sunday magazine, is on the same flight. What happens to Howard and Lucy in Callimbia is one of those accidents that determine fate, that bring love and take away joy, and that reveal the precariousness of our existence. With intelligence, grace, and gentle irony, Penelope Lively illuminates the age-old dance of myth and reality.
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An excellent reading of a difficult book
- By Placeholder on 11-22-12
By: Penelope Lively
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A Stitch in Time
- Collins Modern Classics
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Lucy Scott
- Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Maria likes to be alone with her thoughts. She talks to animals and objects, and generally prefers them to people. But whilst on holiday she begins to hear things that aren’t there—a swing creaking, a dog barking—and when she sees a Victorian embroidered picture, Maria feels a strange connection with the 10-year-old Harriet, who stitched it.
By: Penelope Lively
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Solovyov and Larionov
- By: Eugene Vodolazkin, Lisa C. Hayden - translator, Tom Newth - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Larionov. A general of the Imperial Russian Army who mysteriously avoided execution by the Bolsheviks when they swept to power and went on to live a long life in Yalta, leaving behind a vast heritage of memoirs. Solovyov. The young history student who travels to Crimea, determined to find out how Larionov evaded capture after the 1917 revolution.
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A sly and humane satire both original and thoughtful
- By Stephen86336 on 04-11-22
By: Eugene Vodolazkin, and others
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Bitter Orange Tree
- By: Jokha Alharthi, Marilyn Booth - translator
- Narrated by: Raghad Chaar
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From Man Booker International Prize-winning author Jokha Alharthi, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman's attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish.
By: Jokha Alharthi, and others
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Girl, Woman, Other
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Anna-Maria Nabirye
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of black British women. Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and short-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, Girl, Woman, Other paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.
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smart, compassionate, confronting and enjoyable
- By Kelly on 12-20-19