The Beginning of Everything
By Sandie Angulo Chen,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Engaging novel shows teens' lives altered by tragedy.

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Based on 2 parent reviews
Inappropriate for teens
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Favorite book!
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What's the Story?
In Robyn Schneider's THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING, protagonist Ezra Faulkner recounts his belief that sooner or later tragedy changes everyone's life into a \"before\" and \"after\" tale. His childhood best friend Toby's moment came on a birthday trip to a theme park, when a rollercoaster accident catapulted a decapitated head onto his lap. For golden high school tennis star Ezra, the great tragedy occured just before junior year ended, when a car rammed into him as he fled a party. The accident shattered his knee and permanently injured his leg. At the beginning of senior year, Ezra -- now using a cane -- realizes he's no longer a big man on campus and starts hanging out with Toby and his crew of debate kids and film geeks. There's also someone new who catches Ezra's attention: Cassidy Thorpe -- ethereally beautiful, ridiculously smart and completely unlike Ezra's homecoming queen ex.
Is It Any Good?
Ezra's story is poignant, funny, and demonstrates the arbitrary way that high school students segregate themselves into various little like-minded groups. The Beginning of Everything was originally titled Severed Heads, Broken Hearts, and despite the macabre connotations of that original title, it evokes the overarching theme of the story: that tragedy may divide your life, but that doesn't mean it has to define who you are, how you live, who you love. In fact, tragedy is unavoidable, as Ezra knows firsthand, and it should make you reassess and march onward. Of course, Schneider's prose is much cleverer than those platitudes.
Cassidy is one of those quirky "manic pixie dreamgirl" types, but she's so fiercely intelligent you don't mind that she's also encouraging Ezra to ditch his mall garb for a leather jacket. The many allusions to The Great Gatsby and philosophy are sometimes blissfully obvious (the way Cassidy and Ezra live in houses with faraway views of each other) and sometimes subtly intriguing for die-hard Fitzgerald fans. Precocious high school readers will love Schneider's references and the realistic portrayal of a relationship in the last year of high school.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about The Begining of Everything's many parallels to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. How many similarities did you catch?
Many young adult novels have main characters who feel they're "different" and no one can understand them. How is Ezra different after his injury? What does Cassidy mean when she says that he's the one who changed, not she who changed him?
What do you think the author's trying to say about life and relationships?
Book Details
- Author: Robyn Schneider
- Genre: Contemporary Fiction
- Topics: Friendship, History
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: HarperTeen
- Publication date: August 27, 2013
- Publisher's recommended age(s): 13 - 17
- Number of pages: 352
- Available on: Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
- Last updated: March 11, 2020
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