“A few minutes before his brainstorm, or whatever it was, took place, George McCaffrey was having a quarrel with his wife. It was eleven o’clock on a rainy March evening. They had been visiting George’s mother. Now George was driving along the quayside, taking the short-cut along the canal past the iron foot-bridge. It was raining hard. The malignant rain rattled on the car like shot. Propelled in oblique flurries, it assaulted the windscreen, obliterating in a second the frenetic strivings of the windscreen wipers. Little demonic faces composed of racing raindrops appeared and vanished. The intermittent yellow light of the street lamps, illuminating the grey atoms of the storm, fractured in sudden stars upon the rain-swarmed glass. Bumping on cobbles the car hummed and drummed.”
‘The Philosopher’s Pupil’ by Iris Murdoch
Amazon
Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘Couples’ by John Updike
‘Spies’ by Michael Frayn
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A great 1st para: THE PHILOSOPHER’S PUPIL by Iris Murdoch #books http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mf via @SandraDanby
sandra danby 
I loved this book. Enjoy. The Sea The Sea is also quite spectacular.
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I admit it is so long since I read any Murdoch, they are all on my bookshelf so I just need to re-visit them 🙂 SD
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Though she seems to have fallen out of fashion with many critics, Iris Murdoch has always been a great favourite of mine and always will be. That’s one of the problems with writing; its critics, and even some of its greatest practitioners, often become slaves to current modes.
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I like going back to my bookshelves and pulling out books I have forgotten, they become new discoveries. SD
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Murdoch seems to have discovered alliteration.
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