Product Description

Verity Bell has very big eyes, alphabetical leanings and a look that says she'd like to get inside your brain somehow. Or so her best friend Sally tells her, confessing that back at their school, most children thought she was a witch. Sally, a fellow only-child to whom Verity has been glued since girlhood, has become a worry in her twenties because she has actually allowed a married man to set her up in a flat to be his mistress. Verity sees no correlation whatsoever between this retrograde and fairly shocking love-nest and her own transforming passion for a married man called John, who surely yearns to leave his wife and three children to be with her. Doesn't he? Verity lives in a world of her own and we glimpse her grudges (from 'ants' to the 'zeitgeist'), her personal development (from 'ambition' to 'wobbling') and her idiosyncratic network of obsessions (pick a letter, any letter) in a narrative arranged alphabetically by topics in the most curious and satisfying way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #435215 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
'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

Red Magazine
‘Both hilarious and heart-warming … original and captivating’

Image
‘An innocent eccentric, Verity is an engaging narrator, and this is a charming, sweet and strange book’

Customer Reviews

Original!
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.

A for Addictive
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.

A Pleasure from A to Z
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.