Really good indie booksellers have an uncanny ability to hand you exactly the right book at the right time. It’s the same superpower that I imagine fortune tellers possess: keen observation, deep curiosity, the gift of storytelling, and a well of empathy that runs deep.

Hannah deBree of Tender Button Books is that kind of bookseller. Her sensibilities run the gamut from obscure small press literary fiction to mass market potboiler mysteries. As @briefbookreviews on Instagram, Hannah rarely steers me wrong, and when she advocates for a 5-star read, I immediately add it to my TBR. More than a handful of my favorite books published in recent years have come from Hannah’s reviews: Seascraper (audiobook), Animal Instinct, Wild Dark Shore, Margo’s Got Money Troubles… and so many more.

So when I read Hannah’s glowing review of BEGINNING MIDDLE END, by Valeria Lusinelli, I knew that this was a book I wanted to chase down.

One of my favorite books of 2026 comes out in a month in the US, and I can’t wait to talk about it with anyone and everyone.

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 while 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... what a perfect book to discuss with loved ones and friends. LOVED.

Thank you, Hannah, for sharing your brilliant review with Silent Book Club readers and putting excellent books into the hands of readers. 🫶

Order your copy today

GIVEAWAY!

This month, we’ve partnered with Knopf to spotlight BEGINNING MIDDLE END as our SBC Reads pick. Enter for a chance to win a free copy from the publisher! US readers only, ends August 20, 2026.