Key Features The wonderful new novel from Booker Prize winner Penelope Lively. In this utterly absorbing novel, Lively shows how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other and entire lives to become irrevocably changed. Livelys last novel, Family Album, was shortliste Key Features The wonderful new novel from Booker Prize winner Penelope Lively. In this utterly absorbing novel, Lively shows how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other and entire lives to become irrevocably changed. Livelys last novel, Family Album, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award About the Book: How It All Began When Jonny went missing everything changed. When . . . Charlotte is mugged and breaks her hip, her daughter Rose cannot accompany her employer Lord Peters to Manchester, which means his niece Marion has to go instead, which means she sends a text to her lover which is intercepted by his wife, which is . . . just the beginning in the ensuing chain of life-altering events. In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told novel, Penelope Lively shows us how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal themselves, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other and entire lives to become irrevocably changed. Funny, humane, touching, sly and sympathetic, How It All Began is a brilliant sleight of hand from an author at the top of her game. About the Author: Penelope Lively Penelope Lively CBE (born March 17, 1933) is a prolific, popular and critically acclaimed author of fiction for both children and adults. She has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, winning once for Moon Tiger in 1987. Born in Cairo in 1933, she spent her early childhood in Egypt, before being sent to boarding school in England at the age of twelve. She read Modern History at St Annes College, Oxford, and settled in England.