Something Beginning With

Something Beginning With
Sarah Salway

One of the great hidden gems of the past decade.Written in brief entries from ‘Ambition’ to ‘Zzzzz’ Salway's confident debut novel chronicles the existential ups and downs of British 20-something Verity Bell.The alphabetically arranged mini-chapters make for an inventive and episodic narrative, as Verity muses on her career (A is for Attitude: "I work as a secretary in the media… something I don't always talk about because some people seem to think I'm showing off"), her friendship with the fabulous Sally (B is for Best Friends: "my best friend, Sally, has become the mistress of a millionaire called Colin"), her feelings on Gwyneth Paltrow (G is for You-Know-Who: "If I looked like Gwyneth Paltrow, nothing could possibly go wrong in my life") and other issues of love, friendship and family.With both parents deceased, Verity clings to Sally as a sort of substitute family, but struggles with her insecurities and her envy of Sally's ‘perfect’ existence. She falls madly in love with a married man but, unsurprisingly, their steamy affair is not the solution to Verity's problems; rather, it exacerbates her self-doubt as she plays second fiddle to the wife and children.Ultimately, Verity's life takes an unexpected turn, and she emerges a stronger and more creative woman. Salway wraps her bright, comic writing in bite-sized chunks that make this first novel an easy-reading pleasure.First published in 2004 to considerable critical acclaim - Neil Gaiman called Sarah ‘an astonishingly smart writer’ and Sainsbury’s magazine hailed the book as ‘a Bridget Jones for our times’ - Something Beginning With became a cult classic. By which we mean a book that didn’t sell a huge amount but nearly everyone who did buy it loved it.We are delighted to be able to include Something Beginning With as one of the launch titles for The Library of Lost Books. Sarah has a considerable online following and her debut novel has been unavailable for some time.

SOMETHING

BEGINNING WITH

SARAH SALWAY

To Scott Pack

CONTENTS

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Title Page (#u71c6dda0-2b14-590b-846a-9ef84439d04c)

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B (#uaeb2ef14-b901-5f1d-914e-81497eb83883)

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Reading Index (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Sarah Salway (#litres_trial_promo)

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Ambition

My best friend’s nine-year-old cousin can’t decide whether she wants to be an astronaut or Prime Minister. When I was young, I used to want to be either beautiful or a farmer’s wife. I couldn’t be both because if I was beautiful, then there was no way I would settle for just a farmer. I would be good enough for my very own sugar daddy. I knew what a sugar daddy was before I had heard of an engineer or a chartered surveyor.

See Attitude, Bosses, Colin, Firefighting, Promotion, Ultimatum

Ants

I was sitting in a park during my lunch hour when an ant crawled over my leg. I squashed it with my thumb and flicked its body with my fingers. Then carried on eating my sandwiches. Ants have not always left me so cold. I must have been about eleven when I found an ant colony in our garden. You have never seen anything so marvellous. It was like watching algebra in action. The worker ants were walking in straight lines everywhere and seemed to know exactly where they were going.

But then I remembered something I’d learnt at school and drew a line with my black felt tip right across their path. It threw them into confusion. They wouldn’t cross it even though it was just a drawing.

I told my father this at lunchtime. He said that we should respect ants for their innate civilisation. They even milked aphids, he said, in the same way we milk cows. He went on and on about how clever ants were in a way he never talked about me. After lunch, I boiled a kettle and poured the hot water over the colony. I sat there and watch the ants die. My eyes hurt from where I squeezed them together to make the tears come. At supper, neither my father nor I said anything to each other. I was worried he might ask me why.

See Dogs, Engagement Ring, Jealousy, Outcast, Revenge, Tornados