I am drawn to textured writing and vivid storytelling. I gravitate toward stories where the heros journey is evident and the characters come to life, leaping off the flat page and into my imagination. Through the years Ive become a collector. Of good books, beautiful sentences, and passages that touch me and make me feel. I am an admitted quote whore. One of the reasons I like earlier John Irving novels are because of his intriguing opening sentences. From Irvings A Son of the Circus: “Usually, the dwarfs kept bringing him back—back to the circus and back to India.” From A Prayer for Owen Meany: “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he was the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” I used to spend hours in bookstores, typically Newburyports Jabberwocky Bookshop or Newingtons Barnes & Noble, before I moved up here, just reading opening sentences. Its a practice I still exercise at our local White Birch Books in North Conway. But opening sentences arent the only ones that intrigue me, but they do often hook me, reel me in, and make me their prisoner. Profound sentences and paragraphs continue to seduce me and make me wish, Gosh, if only I could write like that. Just last night, while re-reading Harry Potter - I re-read when Im writing; its like visiting an old friend - I came upon this and I had to save it: A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs. Dursley’s scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley. . . . He couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter — the boy who lived! Thats not J.K. Rowlings opening sentence to Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, but it sure does set the scene, doesnt it? So Im wondering, what opening sentences or passages in a book have you read that have stayed with you long after you read them? Id love to hear some of your favorites. They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books? - Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Thanks, Tom
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 15:13:38 +0000
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