Category: Book Beginnings on Friday

Book Beginnings on Friday

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

This is the opening sentence of the book I’m going to read next:

The night the war ended, both Mrs Trevor and Mrs Wilson went on duty at the Red Cross post as usual.

from The Village by Marghanita Laski. As this sentence indicates the setting is at the end of World War Two – in fact, the very day it ended. It seems to me as though Mrs Trevor and Mrs Wilson don’t want to give up the routine they had during the war and I’m keen to see what effect the end of the war will have on them.

This opening reminds me a bit of One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, also set in 1946 and chronicles the changes the Marshall family encountered, a book which I loved.

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader.

Book Beginnings on Friday

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I’ve just finished reading Standing Water by Terri Armstrong, which I greatly enjoyed and will write more about it in another post. But for now here are the opening lines:

On the way to the funeral Hester started to cry. Neal, driving the ute, glanced at her. He reached over and squeezed her hand, too tightly. The tears wouldn’t stop. She pulled in jagged breaths and held a tissue to her face. Without warning, Neal swerved the ute into a gravel siding, throwing her against the door. He kept the engine idling.

‘For Christ’s sake, Hester. We’ll be there in five minutes.’

‘I know. Sorry.’ She had to pull herself together. She turned her head to look at the roadside scrub, focused on the pale, thin limbs of a top-heavy mallee tree.

‘Wasn’t even your bloody mother,’ Neal muttered.

These lines caught my imagination – I assumed that Neal and Hester were an apparently unemotional son and a very upset daughter-in-law. They drew me into the story and also very definitely set the scene for me, in Western Australia – what I wondered is a ‘mallee tree’. (I thought maybe a eucalyptus, and was pleased to discover that it is.)

Standing Water is Terri Armstrong’s first novel and is the winner of the 2010 Yeovil Literary Prize (pre-publication). It is to be published by Pewter Rose Press on 28 February. (My copy was sent to me by the publishers.)

Book Beginnings is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages every Friday.

Book Beginnings on Friday: The Inspector’s Daughter

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading. Book Beginnings is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages every Friday.

I found The Inspector’s Daughter by Alanna Knight in my local library recently. I’d never come across this author before but see from the book cover that she has written more than 40 novels, 4 non-fiction books, numerous short stories and 2 plays!

With some many books to her name I thought I’d once again jumped into a series of books, but I was lucky because The Inspector’s Daughter is the first in the Rose McQuinn Mysteries. In this book set in 1895 Rose has returned home to Edinburgh from the American Wild West and it’s not long before she steps into her father’s shoes by agreeing to investigate the strange behaviour of her friend’s husband.

The book begins:

Soon I would be safe.

The journey from nightmare was almost ended. Every turn of the train’s wheels, every drifting smoke wreath closed the door more firmly on the past.

Beyond the hills, the blue glimpse of the sea, Edinburgh was fast approaching, epilogue to ten years in America, so-called land of opportunity but for me a land of tragedy and loss.

So, this opening shows that Rose has had a bad time – ‘a nightmare’, and  a ‘tragedy’ in America, but raises questions, such as – what happened? What was the loss? And why did she go to America and what is she coming home to? I haven’t read much further so I don’t know the answers yet – but this opening does make me want to read on to find out.

I’ve borrowed this book from the library but I see on Amazon that a Kindle edition is available. Alanna Knight has a website, where I see she not only writes but also paints!

Book Beginnings on Friday

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading. Book Beginnings is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages every Friday.

I’m in the middle of reading The Safe House by Nicci French. It begins:

The door was the first thing. The door was open. The front door was never open, even in the wonderful heat of the previous summer that had been so like home, but there it was teetering inwards, on a morning so cold that the moisture hanging in the air stung Mrs Ferrer’s pocked cheeks. She pushed her gloved hand against the white painted surface, testing the evidence of her eyes.

‘Mrs Mackenzie?’

Silence. Mrs Ferrer raised her voice and called for her employer once more and felt embarrassed as the words echoed, high and wavering, in the large hallway. She stepped inside and wiped her feet on the mat too many times, as she always did. she removed her gloves and clutched them in her left hand. there was a smell now. It was heavy and sweet. It reminded her of something. the smell of a barnyard. No, inside. A barn maybe.

These paragraphs drew me into this mystery/psychological thriller and I wanted to know why the door was open and the source of the barnyard smell. There’s not long to wait because that becomes clear on the next page. After a dramatic opening the book settles down to a more leisurely pace, but slowly building up the tension.

I am wondering just how safe the Safe House of the title really is.

Book Beginnings on Friday

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

I began reading The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell last night for no reason other than it has been on the top of a pile by my bedside for a while.

It begins well:

 The world began to fall apart at nine in the evening. Not at five when it happened, nor at half-past six when the policemen came and Eve said to go into the little castle and not show herself, but at nine when all was quiet again and it was dark outside.

I had to read on, even though I was falling asleep. It grabbed my attention – what had happened? It must have been something bad, because the policemen came. Who is Eve? Who did she tell to go into the little castle and why? The little castle … what is that? If the thing that happened was so bad, why hadn’t the world begun to fall apart at five? Whatever happened at nine must have been much worse – or was it?

This is a Ruth Rendell book, so I expect it to be mysterious and creepy. I’ve read further on and it’s full of secrets that are slowly being revealed and so far I’m enjoying the experience.

Book Beginnings is run by Kathy at A Few More Pages.

How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you would like, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. The link-up will be at  every Friday and will be open for the entire week.

Book Beginnings: Westwood by Stella Gibbons

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

One of the books I’m currently reading is Westwood by Stella Gibbons. It begins:

London was beautiful that summer. In the poor streets the people made an open-air life for themselves under the blue sky as if they were living in a warmer climate. Old men sat on the fallen masonry and smoked their pipes and talked about the war, while women stood patiently in the shops or round the stalls selling large fresh vegetables, ceaselessly talking. (page 1)

Written in 1946 this is set in wartime London, just after the Blitz. In the next paragraphs the ruins of bombed houses are described surrounded by deep pools of water (from the fire-fighters), ducks on the pools, willow-herb growing where houses once stood, foxes raiding gardens, a hawk flying over the city –

London in ruin was beautiful as a city in a dream. (page 2)

I love the way Gibbons sets the scene, showing the effects of war. It’s a novel about ordinary people and what it was like to live then, during the war. I haven’t read much further on and I’m hoping it will live up to its opening.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.