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Something Beginning With Paperback – 3 Sep 2010

by
Sarah Salway (Author)
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Sarah Salway (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 14 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: The Friday Project; Library of Lost Books edition edition (3 Sept. 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0007368399
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007368396
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 1 x 12.9 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,306,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

• ‘Sarah Salway is an astonishingly smart writer. Her fiction is always beautifully structured, touching and clever – she manages the trick of making people that you care about in stories you admire. I can't wait to see what she does next.’ Neil Gaiman
• 'Both hilarious and heart-warming - and it's transformed into something even more original and captivating by the novel's unlikely obsession with the alphabet' Red Magazine
• 'Verity Bell is a very odd young woman, and this delightfully original novel catalogues her worries and weird flight of fancy … Charming and darkly funny' Marie Claire
• 'An innocent eccentric, Verity is an engaging narrator, and this is a charming, sweet and strange book' Image
• 'Verity Bell is a Bridget Jones for our times … Salway's skill lies in artfully crafting the fragments into an intricate portrait of Verity and her life. A real treat' Sainsbury's Magazine

About the Author

Sarah Salway lives in Kent and London. She is currently the RLF Fellow at the London School of Economics.

Customer Reviews

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA for Addictive
By A Customer on 1 May 2004
Format: Hardcover
I do not often read a book in one sitting but 'Something Beginning with...' demands to be read in one luscious mouthful. It is curiously addictive, and for me the pages turned in rapid succession. Verity, the twenty-something writer of this lexicon, which also has a diary-like feel, is an entertaining narrator who is well-practised in self-delusion. The problems she encounters are solved with originality and verve and her astute observations of life around her are sometimes amusing and sometimes very poignant. As well as relating a highly satisfying tale Verity (or rather Sarah Salway) also manages to incorporate some surprising and interesting facts e.g. how Japanese mothers terminate breastfeeding (see w: withdrawal). This is a lively contemporary story of the meaning of love and loss and I look forward to reading more from this writer.
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5.0 out of 5 starsOriginal!
By Emmsy on 30 July 2006
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This book's a bit like the tardis; it looks like an innocent, light read from the outside, but inside it's packed with mind-expanding ideas and quirky features. The voice is really engaging and the structure clever and daring. While it's possible to read 'Something beginnning With' in one sitting, the themes and questions Sarah Salway raises stay with you for a long time afterwards.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Pleasure from A to Z
By Audrey Moore on 6 May 2004
Format: Hardcover
This is one of the finest books I have read in a while; I loved it. It is miles ahead of all other chick lit out there, because apart from being entertaining, funny and utterly engaging, this novel is also insightful, touching, and beautifully written. Written in alphabetical glossary entries, each short section tells its own story, and the vignettes add up to a lovely book that is as smart as it is sweet. I would highly recommend this one to anyone, not just "chicks". There is really nothing out there quite like it.
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5.0 out of 5 starsWitty, obliquely dark and a keeper ...
By Kay Sexton on 18 Nov. 2010
Format: Paperback
When I first read this book I had no idea what it was - even now, I struggle to explain it to others. It's a list book, but written before the list book genre took hold of publishing, it's a romance, but of a dark and elegantly twisted type, it's a buddy book, but the buddies are an easily-influenced and slightly eccentric woman and her worldly-wise, confident best friend, it's a story about relationships and also about the gap between the outside world and the interior life and how each individual fills that gap with myths, illusions, doubts and peculiarities.

Written in alphabetical format, it's actually an episodic narrative: you can't read it at random and get the best out of it, but you can re-read previous entries to be blown away by the clever foreshadowing of what's to come.

It's a book where every word counts: although you read it as if it's the frothiest of fun, there are dark currents under that surface that catch you before you realise it. You can read it at a sitting and re-read it every year without it feeling too familiar.

For me the entries are like commuting on a train - each one is a glimpse in a lit window, a snapshot of a life and as each day's journey takes you past the same window, you build those snapshots into a deck of pictures you can fan, like a flicker book, to allow you to see the story 'move' and become animated in front of your eyes. Oddly, the more static the entry (like 'yellow') the more animation it adds to the narrative.

It's also a lovely book, warm and clever without ever being pretentious or self-aware, but to understand its fascination you have to read it, because this is one book where the synopsis just can't to justice to the narrative as a whole.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA pleasure from A to Z
By Audrey Moore on 5 May 2004
Format: Hardcover
This is one of the finest books I have read in a while; I loved it. It is miles ahead of all other chick lit out there, because apart from being entertaining, funny and utterly engaging, this novel is also insightful, touching, and beautifully written. Written in alphabetical glossary entires, each short section tells its own story, and the vignettes add up to a lovely book that is as smart as it is sweet. I would highly recommend this one to anyone, not just "chicks". There is really nothing out there quite like it.
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4.0 out of 5 starsRead beneath the surface...
By Michelle Moore VINE VOICE on 17 Sept. 2008
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This book was published in the US as The ABCs of Love. Whatever the name, it's not an easy book to describe. It's written in an almost diary format, but the entries are alphabetically arranged. So, we have a few thoughts on Ambition, Ants and Attitude, before moving on to Baked Beans, Best Friends.. etc. In this way, Verity tells her story. It sounds odd, but it works.

We find out a little about her past, her feelings about her best friend's affair with a married man, then also Verity's own love affair, also with a married man.

On the surface, this appears to be your usual `chick lit' type book, just told in an unusual way. However, Sarah's skill is the way she writes her narrator.. she has captured a rather naive, easily-lead young girl, along with all her thoughts and feelings. It can be read as a rather straight-forward little tale, or if you look for it, you will find a lot more told between the lines. It's a book that will make you smile, then make you think.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Delightful Chocolate Digestive Of A Book
By AllTenToes on 20 Nov. 2013
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
At first look this book seemed like a pleasant, light hearted selection of musings, albeit from an amusing and interesting mind. I liked it immediately and thought it would be good to read a few every so often - and it does lend itself to that kind of reading. However, as I read on I found myself in Chocolate Digestive Mode. You know when you eat one or two you just can't stop until you've finished the packet? By my second or third reading session I had realised that there was much more to this book than a diary of casual daily thoughts. I started to see the links. They gradually appear you see. Very subtle and very enticing. Before I knew it I was hooked - desperate to know what Verity was going to do next. I began to perceive things that might be heading her way, but which she herself hadn't noticed. It takes a very skilful writer to do this successfully and to keep it all credible. A real treat. Thank you Sarah.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 starsEasy Reading

This is the sort of book you can pick up, put down and not loose your place but at the same time I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

Published on 22 Oct. 2013 by Timperley Rhubarb
5.0 out of 5 starsOne you'll go back to .... again and again

Sarah Salway captures the darker side of relationships in a highly innovative form. I read this book in the conventional way, from beginning to end. Read more

Published on 22 Dec. 2010 by Kathryn
5.0 out of 5 starsA Perfect Travelling Companion

In its new format, Something Beginning With makes even the most tedious journey entertaining. I loved the book as a hardback (indeed, it was a Book Club choice) and am thrilled... Read more

Published on 11 Dec. 2010 by Barbara
4.0 out of 5 starsAn old story told in a new way

Very clever structure to this book. The narrative develops subject by subject, alphabetically, and there are cross-references to other sections. Read more

Published on 18 Nov. 2010 by medwaymaria
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting concept

This is an interesting concept for a book, and I enjoyed reading it very much. The story is told by Verity Bell, a 24 year old who seems at odds with her own life at times. Read more

Published on 15 Sept. 2009 by Nicola in South Yorkshire
4.0 out of 5 starsA young woman's A-Z of relationships

At first glance you might write this book off as chicklit with a gimmick - for it is written in an A to Z format with entries under key words and phrases. Read more

Published on 5 July 2009 by Annabel Gaskell

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