Named a Novel Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026 by the New York Times • One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2026 • Named One of the Best Summer Books by TIME, the Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe • A Must-Read Summer Book of the Year by W Magazine
"This book is a profound meditation on parenthood and the nature of change, the essence of story, of accounts and why we account, of what should be accounted for. And at its core is the impossible attempt to return something lost and unknowable—something from the past that sees into the future. I loved it, beginning, middle, and end. It’s a beautiful, maybe perfect, novel."
—Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars
"What sets Valeria Luiselli's new novel apart is its clarity, its immediacy, its vividness. Not just the characters, but the very rooms, the views from windows and the streets, are created with precision and lucidity. And then there are the feelings and the memories, the desires and the fears —these are etched with an astonishing sense of accuracy."
—Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island and Brooklyn
"Structurally masterful. . . . Mind-expanding and heart-expanding; a summer book for life."
—Ali Smith, author of Gliff
"This book is an animal from the future, with five hearts beating at once—daughter, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and reader. Each time one of the hearts beats faster, it touches all the others. An instant classic; Valeria Luiselli at her bravest and most sincere."
—Samanta Schweblin, National Book Award-winning author of Good and Evil and Other Stories
"Inventive, brilliant, playful, and transporting, Beginning Middle End dazzles on every page. It is a novel about love, self-invention, and lore both historical and familial. Valeria Luiselli is extravagantly gifted—a writer possessed of both wisdom and an inquisitive, powerful heart."
—Katie Kitamura, Booker Prize-nominated author of Audition
"Luiselli’s labours have borne luminous work. To call her a novelist would be reductive. . . . dense with feeling and stimuli, but also with awe."
—Globe and Mail
"Arresting and layered. . . . Throughout, Luiselli makes reference to ancient Greek and Roman mythology, which adds depth to her profound portrait of the relationship between mother and daughter as they navigate the new shape of their family and try to understand each other. It’s a masterpiece."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Luiselli’s prose is elegant as ever—she handles difficult themes with grace, and the two main characters prove to be unforgettable. It’s quickly becoming apparent that Luiselli is one of the country’s most gifted novelists."
—Los Angeles Times
"Luiselli pushes the formal envelope in her most audacious work yet."
—Boston Globe
"Formally inventive, highly erudite. . . . A visionary portrait of three generations of women, as well as the times in which we find ourselves. . . . deft and beguiling. . . . There are sentences and paragraphs of rare beauty here, scenes of genuine wit and humour, as well as a deeply forged emotional range, that makes for a wholly immersive, utterly convincing world. Few writers have the skill and dexterity to turn the novel inside out while still providing such readerly pleasure, but Luiselli manages it with verve. It is the kind of novel you wish would never come to an end."
—The Spectator
"Luiselli’s writing is rich, lyrical and moving, whether describing chopping tomatoes or meditating on the passing of time. . . An appendix of sorts—postcards and polaroids that are as unexpected as they are pleasing—add yet another layer to an already abundant story."
—AnOther Magazine
"A clever expression of autofictional subversion. . . . Luiselli’s prose is both ruminative and acutely explicit. . . . A novel that, with a tender hand, leads the reader through a journey’s frustrations and joys before finally arriving at a renewed sense of an ending."
—BOMB
"Beginning Middle End is a moving ode to our short time in the world and the connections that make our lives worth living. Luiselli is truly a bard for our modern times."
—Chicago Review of Books
"Luiselli crafts a novel of ideas that challenges the very idea of narrative, yet one that bristles with raw feeling."
—TIME
"The gifted young Mexican writer returns. . . . The history sought by [the novel's] mother-daughter main characters is not a record of bureaucratic cruelty but something much more intimately personal: the links shaped and tested by generations of shared heritage and experience."
—NPR
"A mother and daughter rework their lives against a volcanic backdrop, amid the Sicilians and their ancient history. After the last page, you sit there a while."
—Chicago Tribune
"Bewitching. . . much of the novel’s ingenuity and intrigue lies in its subtext and interrogation of themes such as memory, migration and the mechanics of writing. . . . an affecting novel for anyone midway through their life or seeking their own new beginning."
—Financial Times
"Merging memoir, road narrative and reflections upon female lineage, Valeria Luiselli’s latest work feels less like a novel than a new literary form altogether, where storytelling itself becomes an act of survival and reinvention."
—Monocle Magazine
"Sustains a vital idea. . . . A broad range of themes: literary history, motherhood, childhood, writing, memory, imagination, the natural world, the body. . . Valeria Luiselli’s novel maps a route away from abusive men and toward a place that fosters collective creativity among women."
—World Literature Today
"Exquisite. . . . With photographs and old postcards enriching this rhapsodic tale of beauty and terror, Luiselli contemplates questions of home, inheritance, time, mythology, metamorphosis, injustice, our impact on nature, and a big mystery in the very heart of life."
—Booklist
"It might be Luiselli’s most radical career-turn. . . . sheer intellectual adventurousness."
—Chicago Review of Books
"Ambitious, richly suggestive and current in its consideration of migration and climate crisis."
—The Daily Mail
