Great openers

Einhard

Hey all,
I'm sarting a novel this week with some kids I teach, and I want to explore what makes a great opener. By way of example, I'm planning to use some novels that have such openers. Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions. 1984 is an obvious one, but would be interested on the opinion of others. The class I'm teaching are all young teens, so nothing too graphic! The opener can be as short as a line (1984) or up to a long(ish) paragraph. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions.

Mercurius

The opening paragraph of Shantaram had me hooked.

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life."

The Princess Bride

When I saw the thread-Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities" came to mind.


"IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. "

This would be suitable for all ages,I reckon- especially considering this paragraph could've been written as recently as yesterday,rather than 1859.

Food for thought,perhaps?

Curly Judge

I intend to write a book some day on my experience of growing up in rural Ireland in the Fifties.
The opening line will be: It is perhaps as well that "the savage loves his native shore", otherwise we might all want to live in Hawaii.

Good eh?

Eliot Rosewater

It depends what you're looking for in an opening. My favorite would probably be that to A Farewell to Arms: "In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains". The reason I think it's a great opening is because of its lyrical beauty, particularly the rhythmic symmetry in there, and because it's describing soldiers even though it sounds like its describing lovers. This is immediate commentary on the personal solidarity amongst those fighting in the First World War. But that might only be meaningful to someone who has read and enjoyed A Farewell to Arms.

The opening to The Grapes of Wrath is in a similar vein: "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth." I think it's nice, again because I like the sound of it. The simple "and they did not cut the scarred earth" is quite powerful: it doesn't sound like a big deal, but because the rains did not work properly a humanitarian disaster ensued which forms the basis of the book. Classic understatement.

A really famous opening is that to Earthly Powers: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." It says an enormous amount about the narrator.

Kinski

Just a small selection of openings I've found memorable:

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know."
Albert Camus, The Outsider

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"'Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now nothing more than estates taken over by the Buonaparte family. No, I give you fair warning. If you won't say this means war, if you will allow yourself to condone all the ghastly atrocities perpetrated by that Antichrist - yes, that's what I think he is - I shall disown you. You're no friend of mine - not the "faithful slave" you claim to be...But how are you? How are you keeping? I can see I'm intimidating you. Do sit down and talk to me.'"
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"Beyond the edge of town, past tar-covered poor houses and a low hill bare except for fallen electric poles, was the institution, and it sent its delicate and isolated buildings trembling over the gravel and cinder floor of the valley. From there, one day in the early spring, walking with a tree limb as a cane, came Balamir, walking with a shadow and with a step that was not free, to fall under the eye and hand of Madame Snow."
John Hawkes, The Cannibal

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day"
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"I hate the face of peasants."
Nadine Gordimer, A World of Strangers

"He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead"
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

"Not everyone knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar."
Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

28064212

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Stephen King - The Gunslinger (Dark Tower Series). I was totally hooked on the series from that point

Grievous

From the master Italo Calvino:

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell; "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.
Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.
Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. In the old days they used to read standing up, at a lectern. People were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book propped against the horse's mane, or maybe tied to the horse's ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrups, you should feel quite comfortable for reading; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.
Well, what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion, or two cushions, on the arms of the sofa, on the wings of the chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first. If you want to, put your feet up; if not, put them back. Now don't stand there with your shoes in one hand and the book in the other.
Adjust the light so you won't strain your eyes. Do it now, because once you're absorbed in reading there will be no budging you. Make sure the page isn't in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn't too strong, doesn't glare on the cruel white of the paper gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. Cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right, you know best.
It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.
So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If on a winter's night a traveler had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn't published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you. In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:
the Books You've Been Planning Top Read For Ages,
the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified,

LostinKildare

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" -- Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"All this happened, more or less." -- Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous insect." -- Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Roisinbunny

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again".

"1801. I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country!"

"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her."

"Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day."

"London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be so wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill."


And lastly 2nd paragraph of one of the first "adult" books I read at the age of 14...
" When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived it at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood. The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood"

Lets see who might guess them all!:cool:

Roisinbunny

Mercurius wrote: »

The opening paragraph of Shantaram had me hooked.

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life."

I really like that. Please excuse my ignorance but who is the author?

Mercurius

Roisinbunny wrote: »

I really like that. Please excuse my ignorance but who is the author?

Gregory David Roberts.

Although classed as a novel, it is mostly his own story.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

BengaLover

'It must have been late autumn of that year, and probably it was towards dusk for the sake of being less conspicuous. And yet a meeting between two professional gentlemen representing the chief branches of the Law should surely not need to be concealed'
'The Quincunx' Charles Palisser..

Amazingly that small two sentence opening paragraph has resting on it a complex and truly deep plot far superior to Dickens with a whopping 2000 pages. Its a book you need to read once, then read again, then lend to your friends.

Mr.Wemmick

Louis de Bernieres: Captain Correlli's Mandolin -

"Dr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse"

Flann O'Brien: At swim-two-Birds -

"Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for 3 minutes chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression."

JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit -

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

Conan Doyle: The sign of four -

"Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morcocco case."

Roberto Calasso: The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony -

"On a beach in Sidon a bull was aping a lover's coo."

Mr.Wemmick

BengaLover wrote: »

'It must have been late autumn of that year, and probably it was towards dusk for the sake of being less conspicuous. And yet a meeting between two professional gentlemen representing the chief branches of the Law should surely not need to be concealed'
'The Quincunx' Charles Palisser..

Amazingly that small two sentence opening paragraph has resting on it a complex and truly deep plot far superior to Dickens with a whopping 2000 pages. Its a book you need to read once, then read again, then lend to your friends.

I loved that book too, indeed it could do with a second read

maddragon

"The wheels on the bus go round and round".

lordgoat

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

and


The storm had broken.

Einhard

Thanks for the suggestions people. I used a sample of them in class during the week and it was quite an interesting experience. How says that 12 year olds are too young to be introduced to the likes of Kafka and Orwell??:D

BengaLover wrote: »

'It must have been late autumn of that year, and probably it was towards dusk for the sake of being less conspicuous. And yet a meeting between two professional gentlemen representing the chief branches of the Law should surely not need to be concealed'
'The Quincunx' Charles Palisser..

Amazingly that small two sentence opening paragraph has resting on it a complex and truly deep plot far superior to Dickens with a whopping 2000 pages. Its a book you need to read once, then read again, then lend to your friends.

I've just ordered this based on the opening line alone.

Richard Roma

"When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. "I wanted to ignore the phone, not only because the spaghetti was nearly done, but because Claudio Abbado was bringing the London Symphony to its musical climax."

Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

--Kaiser--

The first page of Blood Meridian, I'm quoting from memory so i might get a few words out of place

See the child. He is pale and thin. He wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbour yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.

The night of your birth. Thirty three. The leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The dipper stove.

His mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature that would carry her off. The father does not speak her name, the son does not know it. He has a sister in this world he will not see again. He watches, pale and unwashed. He can neither read nor write and in him already broods a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.