I am reading Justine, the first of Lawrence Durrell's acclaimed Alexandria Quartet. I quite like how he opens this novel--I like how he gives us setting, mood, the voice of the narrator, and of course questions, questions, questions! I particularly like the last two lines.
There is no action to it. I like it for similar reasons that I like the opening to the Gormenghast books, I suppose. SF/F I've read recently open either with action, or with some quite overt hook--some phrase in the first sentence or two that is meant to leap out and engage the reader. I'm curious whether there is any current (say last decade or so) fantasy that starts more like this. If none come to mind, could you open an SF/F novel this way. Would an agent or editor take it? Justine opens thusly:
The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes...
I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child--Melissa's child. I do not know why I use the word "escape." The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would choose such a remote place to rebuild. Well, then, I have come here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way....
At night when the wind roars and the child sleeps quietly in its wooden cot by the echoing chimney-piece I light a lamp and limp about, thinking of my friends--of Justine and Nessim, of Melissa and Balthazar. I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we inhabited so briefly together: the city which used us as its flora--precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: beloved Alexandria!
I have had to come so far away from it in order to understand it all! Living on this bare promontory, snatched every night from darkness by Arcturus, far from the lime-laden dust of those summer afternoons. I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price.
There is no action to it. I like it for similar reasons that I like the opening to the Gormenghast books, I suppose. SF/F I've read recently open either with action, or with some quite overt hook--some phrase in the first sentence or two that is meant to leap out and engage the reader. I'm curious whether there is any current (say last decade or so) fantasy that starts more like this. If none come to mind, could you open an SF/F novel this way. Would an agent or editor take it? Justine opens thusly:
The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes...
I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child--Melissa's child. I do not know why I use the word "escape." The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would choose such a remote place to rebuild. Well, then, I have come here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way....
At night when the wind roars and the child sleeps quietly in its wooden cot by the echoing chimney-piece I light a lamp and limp about, thinking of my friends--of Justine and Nessim, of Melissa and Balthazar. I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we inhabited so briefly together: the city which used us as its flora--precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: beloved Alexandria!
I have had to come so far away from it in order to understand it all! Living on this bare promontory, snatched every night from darkness by Arcturus, far from the lime-laden dust of those summer afternoons. I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price.