Beginning Middle End | Reviewed by William Winkler

Mexican-American novelist and essayist Valeria Luiselli holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Bard College. Her earlier writing emphases on Latin American culture and life, as well as the challenges of immigrant children.

Her most recent novel, “Beginning Middle End,” her second to be written in English, details a mother-daughter road trip around the mother’s ancestral island of Sicily.

The novel proceeds in three parts, each named for the prevailing wind affecting life on the island.

The first section (Levante) details their arrival on the island, where they have been invited to use the apartment of a world-renowned pianist while he is away on a concert tour. We learn of the family’s history on the island. The great-grandmother was a peasant who disguised herself as a man to work on the team of a famed archeologist. She was subsequently fired when her pretense was uncovered.

The second section (Ponente) describes how after his return from tour the pianist showed himself to be less than a person of honor, prompting the mother to steal his driver license and depart for Sicily’s west coast, near where the ancestral city now lies in ruins.

The final section, (Scirocco), written in the daughter’s hand, tells us how one of the pair’s dilemmas, the possession of an ancient artifact purloined by the great-grandmother as she excavated a Roman villa, might be resolved.

“Beginning Middle End” will introduce the reader to works of classical literature, including Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. A heavy dose of Greek mythology, the subject of the illicitly owned artifact, permeates the story as well. Either of these themes could possibly weigh the narrative down, but Luiselli weaves them skillfully into the story to add insight into the thoughts and motivations of the principal characters.

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