everything beautiful began after a novel simon van booy

These characters possess none of the intellectual overtones oozing from Milan Kundera’s. It’s an Unbearable Lightness of Being for our generation, executed with a softer, wiser and less existentialist approach. Henry, whose deep secret is that he is forever tarnished by the tragic death of his baby brother, wants nothing more than to bring happiness to his two new friends, and they willingly and fully accept. Somewhat surprisingly, this conflict is quickly resolved. George and Henry also strike up a deeply intimate friendship, only to discover that they love the same woman. The book begins as a love triangle: George is drunkenly and pathetically in love with Rebecca, who needs him because he is her only friend, until she falls in love with Henry. Henry is a British archaelogist cheerily pursuing important work but hiding a terrible secret that will haunt him until he excavates it. George is a young, scholarly American alcoholic. Rebecca has left her marriage and family behind in France, after working for many years as a flight attendent. Rebecca, George and Henry are all living in Athens, each striking a personal balance between escapism and discovery. The novel is divided into three parts serving the impartiality of an omniscient narrator that inhabits the minds of three very distinct characters. This emotional climate is essential for his stories, as his characters are deliberately unable to take solace in the typical placebos of the modern world. Van Booy seems to deliberately create a landscape of timelessness for his characters to inhabit, so that even direct references to modern technology slide by largely unnoticed. The novel begins in modern Athens, but often it’s easy to forget which decade, if not century, the characters live in.

If we didn’t already know this or don’t believe it, he’ll quickly prove his point in this akimbo Odyssey filled with characters aimlessly questing for that intangible ‘thing’ called home. “Athens has long been a place where lonely people go,” claims Simon Van Booy in the opening paragraph of his novel, Everything Beautiful Began After.

Everything beautiful began after a novel simon van booy