Begin Again by Helly Acton

Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if you’d made a different decision? Taken the job, got on the plane, stayed with that person, left that person, said yes instead of no? That is the idea at the heart of Begin Again by Helly Acton, and I absolutely loved it.

It’s warm, funny and incredibly easy to read, but underneath all of that is a question I suspect most of us have asked ourselves at some point: what if?

The story follows Frankie McKenzie, a woman in her thirties who feels as though something is missing from her life. She’s stuck in her comfort zone, questioning her choices and wondering whether she should have done things differently. Then, after a rather unfortunate kebab-related accident, Frankie dies. Not quite where I expected this book to go.

But instead of everything being over, Frankie finds herself at the Station, where she’s given an extraordinary opportunity. She can go back and experience what her life might have looked like if she’d made different choices at five important crossroads. What if she’d accepted the marriage proposal? What if she’d taken that flight? What if she’d gone to the job interview? Would one different decision have given her the life she thinks she should have had?

The lives we didn’t live

This was what really got me, because I think most of us can identify moments in our lives where things could have gone in a completely different direction. It’s incredibly easy to romanticise the path you didn’t take and imagine that if you’d accepted that job, moved to that country or stayed with that person, everything would somehow have worked out beautifully.

The problem is that we know all the difficulties in the life we actually chose. We don’t know the problems that would have existed in the imaginary one. Frankie gets to find out.

Each alternative life gives her a glimpse of what might have been, and gradually the book becomes less about correcting past mistakes and more about understanding how complicated happiness actually is. I found that really thought-provoking, particularly because it’s so easy to look backwards and convince ourselves there was one decision somewhere along the way that could have changed everything.

Family shapes more than we realise

There is also a theme running through the book about parents and the influence they have on the decisions we make as adults, and that hit me harder than I expected.

The way we’re brought up can affect our confidence, relationships and ideas about what a successful or happy life is supposed to look like. Sometimes we don’t even realise how much of what we believe about ourselves started somewhere else.

Acton handles that without making the book feel heavy. There are emotional moments, I definitely cried, but there is plenty of humour too. It’s one of those books that can make you laugh and then, a few pages later, have you putting it down for a moment because something has landed rather closer to home than you expected.

Easy to read, but not forgettable

One of the things I really liked about Begin Again is how readable it is. I actually read some of it at Magic Kingdom surrounded by screaming children, and if a book can keep me completely immersed there, it’s doing something right.

It isn’t a book you have to work hard at. The writing is light and funny and the concept keeps pulling you through because you want to know which version of Frankie’s life she’s going to see next. But I wouldn’t call it fluff.

Underneath the humour are some quite big ideas about regret, fear, relationships, family, happiness and the pressure we put on ourselves to have life figured out. Perhaps most importantly, it challenges the idea that somewhere behind us there was one perfect decision that would have made everything fall neatly into place.

About Helly Acton

Helly Acton studied law at King’s College London before moving into advertising and copywriting, and her life has taken her from London to Zimbabwe, the Middle East and Australia. Her first novel, The Shelf, was longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize, and she followed it with The Couple before writing Begin Again.

Begin Again is published in the UK by Zaffre, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK.

My verdict

★★★★ 4 out of 5 stars.

I loved Begin Again. It’s funny, heartfelt and hugely relatable, particularly if you’ve ever looked back at your life and wondered what might have happened if you’d made a different choice.

What I liked most is that it doesn’t leave you feeling as though you need to go back and fix your past. Quite the opposite. It made me think about how much time we can spend wondering about roads we didn’t take when we still have choices sitting right in front of us.

You can’t go back and choose differently, but you can choose what happens next. And sometimes, that’s your chance to begin again.