“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.”
From ‘The Philosopher’s Pupil’ by Iris Murdoch

Read these other #FirstParas by Iris Murdoch:-
‘A Severed Head’ 
‘The Sea The Sea’ 

Try one of these #FirstParas & 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:
#Books #FirstPara THE PHILOSOPHER’S PUPIL by Iris Murdoch http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mf via @SandraDanby

“The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine. With the tide turning, it leans quietly against the land, almost unflecked by ripples or by foam. Near to the horizon it is a luxurious purple, spotted with regular lines of emerald green. AT the horizon it is indigo. Near to the shore, where my view is framed by rising heaps of humpy yellow rock, there is a band of lighter green, icy and pure, less radiant, opaque however, not transparent. We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot penetrate the sea. Where the gentle water taps the rocks there is still a surface skin of colour. The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon which it lightly pencils in with silver. Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there. But the sky looks cold, even the sun looks cold.”
From ‘The Sea, The Sea’ by Iris Murdoch 

Read these other #FirstParas by Iris Murdoch:-
A SEVERED HEAD
THE PHILOSOPHER’S PUPIL

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Impressionist’ by Hari Kunzru
‘These Foolish Things’ by Deborah Moggach
‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaarder

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SEA THE SEA by Iris Murdoch http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mi via @SandraDanby