The first line or lines of a novel are a portal into the story world. A beguiling first line draws you in, seduces the reader into abandoning the world of everyday for the promise of something new, be it beautiful or frightening or everything in between.
I pulled a few favourite books off my bookshelf and opened to the first page. See if these first lines don’t entice you to read on.
Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. (Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov)
Except for the Marabar Caves — and they are twenty miles off — the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. Edged rather than washed by the river Ganges, it trails for a couple of miles along the bank, scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposits so freely. (A Passage to India, by EM Forster)
Walt said the dead turned into grass, but there was no grass where they’d buried Simon. He was with the other Irish on the far side of the river, where it was only dirt and gravel and names on stones. (Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham)
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. (The Road, by Cormac McCarthy)
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. (The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood)
They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. (Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys)