First Chapter – Page 19

Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea hosts this weekly meme. The idea is that you post the opening paragraph (sometimes maybe a few ) of a book you decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s).

A friend lent me this book, saying she’d really enjoyed it. It’s The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell and it begins:

Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.

The garden is empty, the patio deserted, save for some pots with geraniums and delphiniums shuddering in the wind. A bench stands on the lawn, two chairs facing politely away from it. A bicycle is propped against the house but its pedals are stationary, the oiled chain motionless. A baby has been put out to sleep in a pram and it lies inside its stiff cocoon of blankets, eyes obligingly shut tight. A seagull hangs suspended in the sky above and even that is silent, beak closed, wings outstretched to catch the high thermal draughts.

I can visualise the scene, feel the breeze and find myself holding my breath copying out these paragraphs from the book, waiting with bated breath to find out what is going to happen.

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibilophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometimes maybe a few) of a book she’s decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

I must be one of the minority who didn’t love The Time Traveler’s Wife (it irritated me), but still when I saw Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffennegger and read the opening paragraphs, I thought maybe I’d read it.

The first chapter is called The End and begins:

Elspeth died while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine watching tea shoot into a small plastic cup. Later he would remember walking down the hospital corridor with the cup of horrible tea in his hand, alone under the fluorescent lights, retracing his steps to the room where Elspeth lay surrounded by machines. She had turned her head towards the door and her eyes were open; at first Robert thought she was conscious.

In the seconds before she died, Elspeth remembered a day last spring when she and Robert had walked along a muddy path by the Thames in Kew Gardens. There was a smell of rotted leaves; it had been raining. Robert said, ‘We should have had kids,’ and Elspeth replied, ‘Don’t be silly, sweet.’ She said it out loud, in the hospital room, but Robert wasn’t there to hear.

If you’ve read this book what do you think? I’ve looked on Amazon and the verdict is split almost 50/50 between 5/4 stars and 1/2 stars!