Journey of discovery: Beginning Middle End, by Valeria Luisella, reviewed
Valeria Luiselli’s previous novel Lost Children Archive (2019) was a formally inventive, highly erudite reworking of the American family road trip, a bravura performance that won both the Dublin Literature Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. Her follow up, Beginning Middle End, is a formally inventive, highly erudite reworking of a European family road trip. The framework might be the same – even down to the inclusion of Polaroid pictures – but this is far from a pale retread of earlier themes. It is a visionary portrait of three generations of women, as well as the times in which we find ourselves. Mother and Daughter have escaped New York and are housesitting for the Pianist in Sicily.
