Valeria Luiselli's Beginning Middle End is a deceptively simple novel about a woman reconfiguring her relationship with her daughter and her idea of home and self after a divorce. Luiselli writes: "I had been telling myself, over and over: all I need to do is figure out what happens after the collapse of the traditional story (the parents, the children, the house) and reinvent the narrative." Reinventing the narrative and playing with layers of meaning and the inherent beginning/middle/end structure of the novel, Luiselli sends this mother and daughter into the liminal space of travel; they spend a summer in Sicily, in a moment between past (traditional family structure) and future (post divorce), and Inhabiting a city and apartment that are not their own, they are in their own state of reinvention. As Luiselli treads ever deeper into the middle/end of this story, treating the novel itself as a journey and a process, big ideas about life, family, memory, and endings (big and small) crystallize in a profound and masterful way. Beginning Middle End so thoroughly engaged my brain that I found myself underlining passage after passage, page after page... I can't wait to discuss it with anyone and everyone.