Haunting - Rated 
Jon McGregor's writing is simple and beautiful. I love If Nobody Speaks and this served to reiterate the message that we are all remarkable - lives are lived with little fanfare and here Jon takes those unremarkable lives and lays them bare. I found a great deal of truth in this novel, a great deal that made sense of my own life. In a world populated by uninspiring and turgid bestsellers, this author is a rare treat.
the remarkable within the everyday - Rated
In my reading group, we often have a range of reactions to the books we read and this lends a vitality to our discussions. However, when we read Jon McGregor's first book a couple of years ago, it received universal high praise, perhaps more than for anything we have read before or since. So this book, his second, had a lot to live up to.
I really enjoyed it. McGregor has a close and careful style that can illuminate the poetic within ordinary events. His two main characters, after their brief long distance romance as teenagers, settle down to a married life in which disappointment and depression become frequent occurrences. And yet, because of McGregor's sensitivity to nuance and atmosphere, and his affection for his characters, I found myself drawn into their lives, into the rooms in their house, sharing their small triumphs and their sadness with them.
The plot lines involving a mother who abandons her baby, another who shoulders the anger of this adopted son when he discovers the truth about his parentage in adult life, and a third who cruelly undermines her daughter's ambitions, are not particularly original or distinctive. Where a lesser novelist might have woven them into a standard work, McGregor once again skilfully helps us to see the remarkable within the everyday.
Mundane and marvellous - Rated
Jon McGregor is the kind of writer I wish I found more often. His first novel was recommended as a novel where not much happens but everything happens.His second novel is more of the same beautifully written, concise, authentic prose.
Writing about `real' life is a skill. Some writers seem to think being gritty and bleak is authentic, that the more depressing a situation the more valid.
From bombed-out Coventry to a changed Northern Ireland, back to wartime London and a desolate Scottish quayside, McGregor portrays the mundane, everyday lives of curator David Carter, his wife Eleanor and the families they came from.
Exploring complex themes without the finished work feeling laboured or try-too-hard
'So Many Ways to begin' takes in failed ambitions, family secrets, resentment and what goes on behind closed doors through a story that skitters along, back and forth in time, with intense moments of poetry.
Real life and real love! - Rated
This book was a bit slow to start off with, I was unsure, faltering as to whether I would continue or not, but I am so glad I persevered. It tells the story of ordinary people, but the emotion and language are extraordinary. You feel their pain, their hurt, their highs their lows, frustrations, disappointemnts, it is wonderfully written. There are a few passages where I wept openly at the beauty of the phrasing. It is one of the most beautifully told stories of love and life. And at times it just really touched my heart, I felt like I could have written it, for anyone who has ever loved, could see themselves in some of the passages, and recognise in a heartbeat, the emotions being described. I think this book is a treasure, it is probably not for eveyone, but I already look forward to re-reading it. It just struck such a chord in me and stayed with me for days.
Jon McGregor Shows us how to Begin - Rated 
The very title of Jon McGregor's novel,"So Many Ways to Begin" is enticing. One is likely to ask so many ways to begin what? But at the end of a longish read is the reader's initial enticement rewarded?
The basics of McGregor's novel is straight forward. David Carter has a facination for the mundane and ordinary artefacts of everyday life. His interest is so keen that he begins to collect ordinary artefacts, an interest which in turn leads David to eventually take up a job as a junior curatorial assistant. David enjoys what appears to be a normal and stable family life until he discovers that he was given away at birth to the family he now knows as his own. This triggers a search for his biological mother. Meanwhile, David meets and forms his own relationship with Eleanor and it is broadly this relationship and the search for his biological mother that the novel portrays.
The beginnings that the novel suggests are many, varied and interesting. Some of these beginnings are the many ways in which we might try to piece together the history that makes us who we are. It could be in a conversation between lovers where personal histories are revealed. It could be in the slip of the tongue as in the case of David's senile aunt, Julia, when she unwittingly reveals his origin. Or it could be in the collection of the everyday artefacts of life.
For a relatively new writer and for a second novel, McGregor in a quiet and subtle way tackles some big themes. For me one important example of such themes was the issue of personal identity. The novel asks questions such as who are we and what is it that makes us who we are? In addressing these issues McGregor brings a refreshing approach to answering them.
It is also a story of an enduring and tender loving relationship between the two main characters, David and Eleanor. Through varous trials and tribulations David and Eleanor pull through together with a love for each other that remains intact. McGregor presents these two characters in a warm and tender light. For instance, the following passage depicts one of those tender moments: "He leant forward again and kissed her cheek, touching the corner of her jaw with two fingers as he did so, running his fingers across her face as he pulled away, nudging the tip of one finger between her lips. She kissed his finger, and he drew it back, and they both dropped their eyes looking across the floor, looking around the darkened room, waiting".
McGregor's approach is to narrate the novel through the voice of an omniscient narrator. The narrator's tone is one of care and compassion for the characters he observe. It is not an intrusive voice. This approach had the effect of drawing sympathy, but not sentimentality, from me for the characters.
McGregor's language is broadly unadorned. Metaphor and simile are far and few between but when they are used it is with great effect. For example, the chapter in which David's aunt describes her meeting and subsequent relationship with one major William Pearson is at once cleverly rendered and profoundly touching. MeGregor uses the event of a ballroom dance as an extended metaphor to describe events that sometimes occur in relationsips.
McGregor's novel is ultimately a history of two "ordinary" lives to which he gives importance and significance. It is a history that dares to show how simple everyday events and human behaviour can mean something to us. It is about the importance of us knowing who we are and the significance we place on family connections. For me So Many Ways to Begin is a very good novel that should be read by all who cares about the truth of "ordinary" lives.
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