Category: Book Beginnings on Friday

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.

Book Beginnings: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

(Kept in shorthand)

3 May. Bistritz. – Left Munich at 8.35 pm on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but the train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I got was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most Western part of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.

With such an ordinary straight forward paragraph Bram Stoker begins his Gothic novel of the tale of Count Dracula and the Un-Dead.

I have no interest whatsoever in the modern vampire books, but for a while now I have been thinking about reading Dracula and now in the middle of Carl’s RIP Challenge I decided the time had come.

The opening surprised me a little, so matter-of-fact and such attention to detail. So I knew from the start that this was going to be a meticulously detailed book and that the character of Jonathan Harker was going to be that of a reliable narrator. I also guessed that after such a factual start Jonathan’s Journal would reveal more startling and scary events – well, this is Dracula! And it’s not long before he is on his way to Castle Dracula, his journey accompanied by queer dreams and warnings to go no further. As he approaches the castle he ‘felt a sort of paralysis of fear.’

I’m reading a hard-back copy of Dracula. There are many editions available and the link above is to the Kindle original and unabridged version.

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

Book Beginnings: A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Last Friday I quoted the opening sentences of Life Support by Tess Gerritsen, which was going to be the next book I read. I did read on for a couple of chapters but had to stop as I was just not in the mood for reading a medical thriller set in a hospital – too close to the bone! I fancied reading something less disturbing, so I took A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble down from the bookcase and began to read that:

I had to come home for my sister’s wedding. Home is a house in Warwickshire, and where I was coming from was Paris. I was keen on Paris, but will refrain from launching into a description of the Seine. I would if I could, but I can’t. (page 7)

A Summer Bird-Cage was Margaret Drabble’s first novel. It was first published in 1963 and is set at the in the early 1960s, about the lives of two sisters – Sarah, the narrator who has just graduated from Oxford University and is wondering what to do with her life, and her beautiful sister Louise who at the start of the book is about to marry, Stephen, a rich novelist. From what I’ve read so far, neither of them seem happy and there is definitely tension between them.

Interesting I think, and I’m wondering if it maybe a bit autobiographical – Margaret Drabble is the younger sister of A S Byatt. Maybe this sentence was personal, comparing the two sisters, when Sarah says – ‘As far as tags go she is grande dame where I am jeune fille, and she leads all her life to match it.’ Or maybe I’m reading too much into that.

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

Book Beginnings: Life Support

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Life Support by Tess Gerritsen is the fourth book I’ll be reading in the RIP IV Challenge. According to the back cover this is ‘a quick, delightfully scary read‘, which fits in well with the RIP challenge criteria.

It begins:

A scalpel is a beautiful thing.

Dr Stanley Mackie had never noticed this before, but as he stood with head bowed beneath the OR lamps, he suddenly found himself marveling at how the light reflected with diamondlike brilliance off the blade. It was a work of art, that razor sharp lunula of stainless steel. So beautiful in fact, that he scarcely dared to pick it up for fear he would somehow tarnish its magic. In its surface he saw a rainbow of colors, light fractured to its purest elements. (Page 13)

This will be the first book by Tess Gerritsen that I’ve read. It’s been on my bookshelves for quite a while now and I have been wary of reading it in case it’s too gory for me. I didn’t buy it, it was a free book with the magazine Woman and Home, which I buy now and then. When I read the Introduction I was even less sure this book was for me as Tess Gerritsen wrote that she got the idea for the book whilst at medical school (she is a doctor), when she heard the professor say the words ‘human cannibalism’ in his lecture on Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, a viral infection of the brain.

So I put this book way down on my to-be-read books, but since then I’ve read several favourable reviews of other books by Gerritsen so I thought I’d try this one. I like the style of writing in this first paragraph and it does make me want to read on, so when I’ve finished one of my current reads I’m going to start Life Support. Let me know what you think if you’ve read it?

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

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Today I finished reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. It has taken me several weeks to read it and I fancy a complete change and a shorter book!

So, I’m thinking of reading No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe, which begins:

For three or four weeks Obi Okonkwo had been steeling himself against this moment. And when he walked into the dock that morning he thought he was fully prepared. He wore a smart palm-beach suit and appeared unruffled and indifferent. The proceeding seemed to be of little interest to him. Except for one brief moment at the very beginning when one of the counsel had got into trouble with the judge. (page 1)

This is my copy which I bought several years ago from a second-hand bookshop somewhere, after reading its predecessor Things Fall Apart, whose hero was Obi’s grandfather. I thought Things Fall Apart was an amazing book and one that had made a great impression on me, so why haven’t I read No Longer at Ease before now?

From the blurb on the back cover I see that Obi has returned to Nigeria from studying in England. He is a civil servant with a respectable job and a fiancée, but despite the expectations of his family and tribe he falls victim to the corruption of Lagos. It promises to be a study of the cultural change in Nigeria during the 1950s.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy, at ‘˜A Few More Pages’.