Comments on: The sense of a beginning

By: ed young

ed young — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:34:10 +0000

Opening sentences are important, but no dedication to a book wanted me to read it more than this from Twain’s “Roughing It”:

TO:
CALVIN H. HIGBIE,
Of California,
an Honest Man, a Genial Comrade, and a Steadfast Friend.
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
By the Author,
In Memory of the Curious Time
When We Two
WERE MILLIONAIRES FOR TEN DAYS.

How could there not be a great story THERE?!?

By: Simone

Simone — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 19:16:11 +0000

Okay, “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova is a favorite and it’s first line is definitely blah: “In 1972, I was sixteen – young, my father said, to be traveling with him on his diplomatic missions.”

“Jane Eyre” is not super impressive: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”

But “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby hits it right out of the park: “My desert-island, all-time, top five, most memorable split ups, in chronological order:”

By: Jude Hardin

Jude Hardin — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:55:15 +0000

I don’t know how far along you are in GONE GIRL, Miriam, but eventually you’ll realize how perfect that first line is.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:28:43 +0000

Speaking of McEwan, I liked his opening from ENDURING LOVE. The first paragraph. It wasn’t one particular well-crafted sentence… it was the collective that fueled a wave of subtle horror. Each sentence peeled back just a little more of the picture, and you don’t want to look, but you can’t help wanting to look.

By: Joelle

Joelle — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:20:50 +0000

I don’t really know of any offhand, but the one line I always remember is: Scarlet O’hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

By: Kristin Laughtin

Kristin Laughtin — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:11:41 +0000

It’s pretty hard to knock it out of the park the way so many of the classics did. MOBY-DICK, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, and like you mentioned above, A TALE OF TWO CITIES all have memorable openings that are remembered over a century later. I don’t even think it’s a case of them coming first and everything already being done by now, either. They live on partly because they have that elusive hook that compels one to talk of it forever.

My two favorite novels are SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut and SPIN by Robert Charles Wilson. Both have strong openings, although I suspect the former is the one most people would count as one of the “great” ones. Even then, they’re probably remembering the line of the first chapter (“Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”) rather than the true first line in the prologue (“All this happened, more or less.”) Personally, I think it’s the colon that makes the “listen” line work so well; it’s unusual and striking and makes you pay attention.

The first line of SPIN is “Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere.” I find it very evocative, but I also find the first line of ATONEMENT to be so, and it’s not one of the ones you list as the greatest. I guess the best opening line ever isn’t as important if you can still write a strong one and then keep the rest of the novel as gorgeous.

By: K Callard

K Callard — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 18:45:27 +0000

I don’t know what the first line of The Hunger Games is, but I know it didn’t hook me. In fact, I only managed to read three pages before I put it down. Eventually, thanks to peer pressure, I did finish the book. I would even say I enjoyed it, (although not enough to pick up the sequels and re-enter Collins dark world)but it definitely took effort to get into.