Tag Archives: first sentence

Great Opening Paragraph 137… ‘The Last Lifeboat’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Mid-Atlantic. 17 September 1940.
Alice can’t breathe. The wind snatches her breath away, leaving her gasping for air as she half jumps, half stumbles into the lifeboat and falls, face down, against the boards. She tries to pull herself up, but the lifeboat pitches violently as another monstrous wave smashes into them and throws Alice into a woman beside her. The woman loses her grip on the rain-slicked mast and tumbles, with extraordinary grace, into the dark ocean, her white nightdress unfurling around he as she spins and twirls like a ballerina in a pirouette. Too shocked to respond, Alice can’t look away.”
Hazel GaynorFrom ‘The Last Lifeboat’ by Hazel Gaynor

Click the title to read my review of THE LAST LIFEBOAT…

… and these other novels by Hazel Gaynor:-
THE BIRD IN THE BAMBOO CAGE
THE COTTINGLEY SECRET

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison
‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon
‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE LAST LIFEBOAT by Hazel Gaynor @HazelGaynor https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7UL via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 133… ‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The first time I met Lillian Pentecost, I nearly caved her skull in with a piece of lead pipe.”
Stephen SpotswoodFrom ‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood 1PENTECOST&PARKER

Click the title to read my review of FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD #1PENTECOST&PARKER

Here are my reviews of other books in this series:-
MURDER UNDER HER SKIN #2PENTECOST&PARKER
SECRETS TYPED IN BLOOD #3PENTECOST&PARKER

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt 
‘Jack Maggs’ by Peter Carey 
‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ by Thomas Hardy 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-79u via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 118… ‘The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In the middle of the lonesome town, at the back of John Street, in the third house from the end, there is a little room. For this small bracket in the long paragraph of the street’s history, it belongs to Eneas McNulty. All about him the century has just begun, a century some of which he will endure, but none of which will belong to him. There are all the broken continents of the earth, there is the town park named after Father Moran, with its forlorn roses – all equal to Eneas at five, and nothing his own, but that temporary little room. The dark linoleum curls at the edge where it meets the dark wall. There is a pewter jug on the bedside table that likes to hoard the sun and moon on its curve. There is a tall skinny wardrobe with an ancient hatbox on top, dusty, with or without a hat, he does not know. A room perfectly attuned to him, perfectly tempered, with the long spinning of time perfect and patterned in the bright windowframe, the sleeping of sunlight on the dirty leaves of the maple, the wars of the sparrows and the blue tits for the net of suet his mother ties in the tree, the angry rain that puts its narrow fingers in through the putty, the powerful sudden seaside snow that never sits, the lurch of the dark and the utter merriment of mornings.”
Sebastian BarryFrom ‘The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty’ by Sebastian Barry

Here’s my review of THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY

… and my reviews of other novels by Sebastian Barry:-
A LONG LONG WAY
A THOUSAND MOONS
DAYS WITHOUT END
OLD GOD’S TIME

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton
‘Such a Long Journey’ by Rohinton Mistry
‘Sea Glass’ by Anita Shreve

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY by Sebastian Barry  https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Js via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 111… ‘Reading Turgenev’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“A woman, not yet fifty-seven, slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table in a corner. Her slices of buttered bread have been halved for her, her fried egg mashed, her bacon cut. ‘Well, this is happiness!’ she murmurs aloud, but none of the other women in the dining room replies because none of them is near enough to hear. She’s privileged, the others say, being permitted to occupy on her own the bare-topped table in the corner. She has her own salt and pepper.”
William Trevor
From ‘Reading Turgenev’, featured in ‘Two Lives’ by William Trevor

Here’s another #FirstPara by William Trevor:-
DEATH IN SUMMER

… and my review of LAST STORIES

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen
‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara READING TURGENEV by William Trevor http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qN via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 93… ‘Death in Summer’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“After the funeral the hiatus that tragedy brought takes a different form. The suddenness of the death has gone, irrelevant now. Thaddeus has stood and knelt in the church of St Nicholas, has heard his wife called good, the word he himself gave to a clergyman he has known all his life. People were present in the church who were strangers to him, who afterwards, in the house, introduced themselves as a few of Letitia’s friends from the time before he knew her. ‘And where is Letitia now?’ an undertaker a week ago inquired, confusing Thaddeus, who for a moment wondered if the man knew why he had been summoned. ‘It’s Letitia who has died,’ he said, and answered, when the man explained, that Letitia was in the mortuary, where she’d been taken.”
William TrevorFrom ‘Death in Summer’ by William Trevor

Here’s another #FirstPara by William Trevor:-
READING TURGENEV, featured in ‘Two Lives’

… and my review of LAST STORIES

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers 
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall 
‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara DEATH IN SUMMER by William Trevor via http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vz @SandraDanby

#Books Great Opening paragraph 44… ‘The Hunger Games’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course she did. This is the day of the reaping.” Suzanne CollinsFrom ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins

Read my reviews of the five books of the Underland Chronicles, also by Suzanne Collins:-
GREGOR THE OVERLANDER #1UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE PROPHECY OF BANE #2UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE CURSE OF THE WARMBLOODS #3UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE MARKS OF SECRET #4UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE CODE OF CLAW #5UNDERLANDCHRONICLES

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Greene
‘The Last Tycoon’ by F Scott Fitzgerald
‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4bk via @SandraDanby