Morning Book Group will resume on October 4 with The House at Riverton by Kate Morton.
I started the book today and it's an easy one to fall into.
First sentences set the tone, and I'm always interested in how an author begins her book.
Here is the first sentence from The House at Riverton: "Last November I had a nightmare."
And continuing on, the first paragraph: "
"It was 1924 and I was at Riverton again. All the doors hung wide open, silk billowing
in the summer breeze. An orchestra perched high on the hill beneath the ancient maple,
violins lilting lazily in the warmth. The air rang with pealing laughter and crystal, and the
sky was the kind of blue we'd all thought the war had destroyed forever. One of the
footmen, smart in black and white, poured champagne into the top of a tower of glass
flues and everyone clapped, delighting in the splendid wastage."
What are some of the best first sentences in literature? Here are some possibilities:
- "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. (Book discussion for this one - February 7)
- "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K Rowling
- "The solution to my life occurred to me one evening while I was ironing a shirt." The Office by Alice Munro
- "It was a dark and stormy night." A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
- "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." 1984 by George Orwell
- "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." A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- "Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish." The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway
- "It was love at first sight." Catch-22 by Joseph Heller