“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. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.”
From ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway
And here are the #FirstParas from other novels by Hemingway:
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘I’ll Take You There’ by Joyce Carol Oates
‘The Impressionist’ by Hari Kunzru
‘That They May Face the Rising Sun’ by John McGahern
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Us via @SandraDanby
SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS 
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Pingback: Great Opening Paragraph 101… ‘A Farewell to Arms’ #amreading #FirstPara | SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS
Pingback: Great Opening Paragraph 88… ‘To Have and Have Not’ #amreading #FirstPara | SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS
That fabulous description ‘It looked like the flag of permanent defeat’………….. I love it.
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I love Hemingway’s writing. SD
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Me, too. I was reading his memoir, ‘A Moveable Feast’ when the attacks happened in Paris.
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Have you been to his house on Key West? SD
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That would be amazing but I’ve never been to the States. I’ve seen photos of his home and it looks fabulous.
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Very atmospheric, hundreds of cats! SD
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