A skinny, pockmarked teenager from Inglewood was crouched nearby, rummaging through a stolen backpack. He simply followed the bike’s trajectory, over the railing toward the sunrise, his long hair shining in the pink-gold glow and his arms outstretched to meet the rusty spokes of the construction barrier at the base of the concrete pilings. The seventeen-year-old girl behind him gave a terrified howl as she flew off the back of the motorcycle, cartwheeled twice, and slammed facedown on the pavement, breaking both wrists and four front teeth and going mercifully unconscious. It was a little after dawn on the twenty-first of March 1981 when Randall Pritchard torqued his Triumph Bonneville off the 101 interchange southeast of Silverlake. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, thanks.“Ī small beep sounded. She heard the machine click on her kitchen counter as it played her outgoing message. She knew the phone would go to answering machine if she didn’t grab it one more. She clawed her forefinger through the bumpy part of the side.įinally, she made a rip, then peeled off the wrapping and scrunched it in her palm. She ignored the ring and dug her nails into the plastic. Here’s how he continued after the opening sentence: On the day the world received its first phone call from heaven, Tess Rafferty was unwrapping a box of tea bags.Īlbom clearly knows how to write a great first sentence, but he’s also adept at writing a compelling first page. When I first came across this gem from Aciman, one of our greatest contemporary writers, my thoughts immediately went to John Barth, who famously observed: “In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.“ But when they’re crafted at a high artistic level, as we see here, they are to be treasured. Opening sentences of 100-plus words are rare because they’re so exceptionally difficult to pull off. This is a tour de force of an opening sentence, all 170 words of it. Halfway through dinner, I knew I’d play the whole evening in reverse-the bus, the snow, the walk up the tiny incline, the cathedral looming straight before me, the stranger in the elevator, the crowded large living room where candlelit faces beamed with laughter and premonition, the piano music, the singer with the throaty voice, the scent of pinewood everywhere as I wandered from room to room, thinking that perhaps I should have arrived much earlier tonight, or a bit later, or that I shouldn’t have come at all, the classic sepia etchings on the wall by the bathroom where a swinging door opened to a long corridor to private areas not intended for guests but took another turn toward the hallway and then, by miracle, led back into the same living room, where more people had gathered, and where, turning to me by the window where I thought I’d found a quiet spot behind the large Christmas tree, someone suddenly put out a hand and said, “I am Clara.“ For instance, the hollowed-out interior of the mountain is so well described that by the end of the book the reader is capable of drawing a map of its intricate corridors and chambers, its booby traps and depots-and especially its high-suction toilet that has the talismanic force of a coffin.“ In a 1988 New York Times review, Edmund White wrote about the book: “It is a wildly improbable fable when recalled, but it proceeds with fiendishly detailed verisimilitude when experienced from within. The narrator’s use of rich, vivid detail is a hint of things to come. Although the distorted reflection of my surroundings was amusing, my own twisted image seemed merely pitiful.“ With that raincoat on, I looked like a whale calf that had lost its way, or a discarded football, blackened from lying in the trash. The city hall building is a black steel frame covered with black glass, like a great black mirror you have to pass it to get to the train station. Once, hoping to make myself more inconspicuous, I took to wearing a long black raincoat-but any hope I might have had was swept away when I walked by the new city hall complex on the broad avenue leading up to the station. I stand five feet eight inches tall, weigh two hundred and fifteen pounds, and have round shoulders and stumpy arms and legs. The narrator then goes on to advance the story in an intriguing way: The entire opening paragraph piques our curiosity, but especially the final sentence. My nickname trails after me like a shadow. Besides, I’d rather not run into anyone I know. It takes me the better part of an hour to drive there, but since my purchases include a lot of specialized items-faucet packing, spare blades for power tools, large laminated dry cells, that sort of thing-the local shops won’t do. Once a month I go shopping downtown, near the prefectural offices.
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