Another week’s gone by with little attention to fiction, but I’ll console myself by mentioning that 2007 hasn’t started yet, so not making NY Resolution progress is not yet a bad thing.
I did rediscover my copy of Sol Stein’s Stein On Writing
Andrew McGahan’s Praise
Things started with Cynthia in October.It was three days after my twenty-third birthday. I’d just quit work at the drive-through bottle shop of the Capital Hotel.
It sets the tone: the rest of Praise is similar. Simple story-telling but so honest that you just have to keep reading. It grabs some interest: what’s the whole story with Cynthia. How does it work out? Is Praise a love story? Yeah, but … anyway, this kind of opening fits, even if it doesn’t exactly drag me in.
Nikki Gemmell’s Shiver
They put me into a small, white, still room and that was wrong. One day Rick came and took me outside into the air that was vivid with smell and colour and noise.
Funny, I adore this book but this opening means nothing to me. It’s a kind of prologue in italics, and the opening of chapter one works much better for me.
Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia
My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost. I am often considered to be a funny breed of Englishman, a new breed as it were, having emerged from two old histories. But I don’t care – Englishman I am (though not proud of it), from the South London suburbs and going somewhere.
Perfect, for me. Karim is “going somewhere”, I want to find out if he makes it. He’s obviously not 100% English with a name like that. I really, really want to know more (and I highly recommend this book, for a laugh and some insights).
Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down
Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block? Of course I can explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block. I’m not a bloody idiot.
Master storyteller or what! Totally conversational, totally hooks me in, and I totally have to know more. The whole book is like that, using four different characters and such wonderful first-person narrative from all of them. Great idea for a story and great execution, and it all starts off (in my mind) perfectly.
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