She couldn’t be sure, but her child in its white womb was growing, and sometimes turned its body when she warmed it with breath.” Words at their finest moments dissolve to sentiment. She spoke quietly and hummed songs from school. She visited her magic child with devotion. Something shuffling inside a small, silken belly webbed to the rough bark. “Once there was a tree upon which she found something growing. Here’s an excerpt from the prologue with this child’s voice: Only at the end of the book do we figure out (or at least only then did I figure out) who this intriguing child is, and we never get to know her beyond this brief prologue, although her existence confirms a pleasant working out of things at the end of the book-a kind of ah ha! of understanding that fills things out for the reader in retrospect. But because children care little for guiding anyone through their thoughts and they tend to jump through non sequiturs, my first read of the prologue left me very lost. The narrative voices, which vary with each major section of the book, are for me the author’s most distinctive and impressive accomplishment, but also sometimes part of what makes this a challenging read.įor example, Van Booy opens with a Prologue told in a very convincing child’s voice. Love and grief take extreme forms that enlighten and intrigue the reader. So this is an excellent choice for those more interested in a literary tour de force than a story.Īt the core of Everything Beautiful Began After are three very flawed characters whose emotional crippling as children leads them to unusual relationships as adults. I found it disorienting at times, and sometimes the masterful demanded I take notice of the author’s skill rather than lose myself in his characters and their world.

Van Booy has created a masterful piece of fiction, although it is not an easy read.

The narrative voices and the structure of the novel are inventive and very contemporary in style. Those two aspects turn out not to be overly central, but I’m glad I read it. This book caught my attention because it is set in Athens and one of the characters is an archaeologist, topics I enjoy.

Everything beautiful began after