Scott

Just a word of warning – this first line discussion may have a few more spoilers than some of the previous ones.  So if for some reason you have been dying to read Twilight but haven’t gotten around to it yet, this post may not be for you.  With that out of the way – on to the first line:

“I’d never given much thought to how I would die – though I’d had reason enough in the last few months – but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.”

When you read this for the first time, without knowing where the story is actually going, there’s no denying that this is an attention grabbing opener.  In the first sentence we know that the narrator’s life is in danger, death being the only likely outcome, and while the death she is actually facing is unexpected, death itself is not.  What more can you want from a first line?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe a first line that is logically consistent with the rest of the book?  Yeah, that would be nice, but unfortunately we don’t get that here.  Let’s break it down.  So Bella is telling us that she hasn’t given much thought to how she would die.  This isn’t surprising for a normal teenager, but I think it’s pretty ridiculous to think that someone dating a vampire, hanging out with vampires, and being threatened by vampires (even the ones that are supposed to be her friends) wouldn’t give a passing thought to how she might die.  Maybe something like “It’s not entirely unreasonable to think I might get eaten by a vampire”?

Clearly Bella/Meyer understand this, though, as the quote here immediately points out how ridiculous it is that Bella hasn’t thought about dying considering she had “reason enough to.”  Okay, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here.  Bella was so in love with her super human boyfriend that she never envisioned how he, or any other vampire threat, could harm her, but she’s now admitting that she should have at least considered the possibility.

“…but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.”  Wait, so you admit that you probably should have been considering how you might die since you are dating someone (and hanging out with others) who you would typically expect to murder humans and drink their blood, but now that you are contemplating how you might die you’re surprised that you’re about to be murdered by a vampire.  Really? Really? How then, Bella, would you have expected to die?  Some entirely non-vampire related sequence of events?  That’s like a death row inmate saying “I never put any thought to how I might die, but now that I’m in the process of being executed, I have to say this is pretty unexpected.”

The thing that fascinates me so much about this opening line is how good it is the first time you read it, and how bad it is in hindsight.  Without knowing where the plot goes you would never realize how ridiculous it is.  In fact, if you are anything like me, by the time the flashback catches up to this part of the book and she’s about to die, you will barely even remember that’s where the novel started, let alone the exact phrasing that was used.  I imagine that Meyer’s only concern was getting the readers attention, inconsistencies be damned.

Note:  This analysis makes it sound like I hated the book.  I didn’t – I just think the opener is laughably ridiculous.

For this week’s First Line let’s see what John Irving has to offer in A Prayer for Owen Meany:

“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”

It’s interesting coming to this first line after Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell last week.  In that case we had a short, subtle, straightforward sentence that was particularly good at setting the stage for tone and tempo.  It gave us some idea of setting and story, but for me, that wasn’t it’s primary purpose.

Here, however, we are thrown immediately into the story.  First of all, we know that our narrator (John, conveniently enough) will remember Owen, but not in a simple, reminiscing sort of way.  Instead, he is doomed to remember Owen.  The language here conveys a sense of inevitability or fate about the role Owen will play in John’s life.

This idea is confirmed as John relays that Owen will be both the instrument of death for John’s mother as well as the reason John believes in God and becomes a Christian.  Reading this immediately makes me want to continue with the book.  How was Owen the instrument of death for John’s mother?  How can John forgive this and become a Christian thanks to Owen?  What happens that leads up to all this?

It’s also interesting to compare this to last week because, where it would be easy to read the first line of Strange quickly and without much thought about how it is setting the stage for the rest of the book, Owen Meany begs for the reader to consider it more thoroughly.  Irving “spoils” what is to come because it is the journey to get there that is so fascinating in Owen Meany, not the events in and of themselves.

As you can see I think this is an excellent opening line, and upon looking at it for this post I wanted to start reading Owen Meany again.  For those who haven’t read this before, though, what do you think?  Has it piqued your interest?  And for everyone, do you like when books give away a lot at the beginning in this way, or would you prefer they hold big plot elements until the very end, for a more grand reveal?

I think that far too often the first line of a book gets wasted on the reader (myself included). How often do we, when first cracking open a brand new book, stop to appreciate everything the author is trying to tell us right at the very beginning? Sure there are times when we are immediately captivated by some good writing, or by a novel that jumps right into the action, but do we really give enough time to what is literally setting the stage for everything to come?

With that in mind, I’d like to start a reoccurring feature on the blog: First Line. In these posts I will provide the first line of a book I have read (and hopefully many of you have as well) and discuss what it does right and wrong in context of the book as whole.  Don’t worry, I won’t be spoiling anything specific.  Instead, I’ll be focusing on the tone, themes, etc. of the novel.  It’s not exactly a review, either, because as we all know a book can start great and end terribly or start terribly and end great.  This is still in its infancy, so I’m open to suggestions as well.

For our first First I’ve chosen Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.  This novel introduces itself to us with the following:

“Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.”

There is so much contained within this little sentence, it’s unbelievable.  The first thing that stands out to me is the straightforwardness of the claim that there were magicians.  There’s no attempt to justify the claim or to convince the reader with flowery language.  It is merely a statement of fact that there was a society of magicians in York some years ago.

This may seem insignificant at first considering many books assume the lore they are based on, but it is a cornerstone for this book.  Strange is written as though it were a history book – a “true” account of the Napoleonic wars where magicians played a critical role.  We can see immediately that this book takes the idea of magicians, and their place in history, seriously.

In many ways it is what is left out of this first sentence that makes it so interesting.  It does not start with “Once upon a time in York there was a society of magicians.”  No, this is no fairy tale, and we as the reader now know that we should not treat it as such.

There is a certain dryness of voice that is evident in this first sentence as well.  No embellishment is necessary when the facts themselves are interesting, an idea clear in this opener, and one which continues throughout the book.  Furthermore, it is this same dry tone that will be responsible for so much of the humor in the book.  History it may be, but that doesn’t mean that it will be any less entertaining.

Ultimately, without even moving beyond the first sentence, Clarke has set us up for a book that, while humorous and entertaining, is meant to be taken seriously.  The footnotes, characters, and plot are only interesting if we allow ourselves to read them as though they are real.  If we look at this book and think “fantasy” it’s merely a clever diversion.  If it’s seen as “history”, then it becomes a near masterpiece of writing.  Clarke obviously knew this, and she was preparing us as best she could from the very beginning.

So there you have it.  Let me know what you think – both about the first line of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and of the First Line concept as a whole.