first chapter first paragraph

FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH: The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss

- Meg 1 Comment

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea! I’m working on bringing back some old features I used to like posting while working on some new ones, and posting a first chapter, first paragraph sort of deal was always fun for me. I never really stuck to new or old books, but today, as I’m going through more of my bookshelves, I chose The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I’ve had this on my shelves for far too long, and when I opened up the first page, I was really struck by the lyricism of Krauss’ opening chapter. I know this book has been on many favorites lists and it was a bestseller for a while, and I think it’s high time I read this.

When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT. I’m surprised I haven’t been buried alive. The place isn’t big. I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, kitchen table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet to the front door, impossible, I have to go by way of the kitchen table. I like to imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, and the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to round the toilet and the kitchen table in order to arrive at the door. If it happens to be Bruno, I let him in without a word and then jog back to bed, the roar of the invisible crowd ringing in my ears.

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?

FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH: The Gentleman, by Forrest Leo

- Meg

fbmfirstchapterfirstparagraph

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea!

I received Forrest Leo’s The Gentleman in a Muse Monthly box a few months ago, and I still haven’t gotten around to reading it. Oops. The Gentleman is Leo’s debut novel, and is about a Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, who has discovered he has no money, marries a woman for her money, and realizes he does not love his wife because his muse has left him. The description on the inside cover says that Lionel believes he meets the dark lord/devil at a party, and once Lionel’s wife disappears he believes he accidentally sold her to the devil himself. After his wife’s disappearance, Lionel, with some help along the way, plans a rescue mission to Hell to rescue her.

One: In Which I Find Myself Destitute & Rectify Matters in a Drastic Way

My name is Lionel Savage, I am twenty-two years old, I am a poet, and I do not love my wife. I loved her once, not without cause – but I do not anymore. She is a vapid, timid, querulous creature, and I find after six months of married life that my position has become quite intolerable and I am resolved upon killing myself.

After flipping through several pages after the introduction, this looks like a very well-paced, humorous novel, and I’m excited to start it after I finish up a few of my current reads.

FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH: The Mortifications, by Derek Palacio

- Meg

fbmfirstchapterfirstparagraph

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea!

Derek Palacio’s The Mortifications follows a rural Cuban family in the 1980s torn apart during the Mariel Boatlift. Uxbal Encarnación—father, husband, political insurgent—refuses to leave behind the revolutionary ideals and lush tomato farms of his sun-soaked homeland. His wife Soledad takes young Isabel and Ulises hostage and flees with them to America, leaving behind Uxbal for the promise of a better life. But instead of settling with fellow Cuban immigrants in Miami’s familiar heat, Soledad pushes further north into the stark, wintry landscape of Hartford, Connecticut. There, in the long shadow of their estranged patriarch, now just a distant memory, the exiled mother and her children begin a process of growth and transformation.

Ulises Encarnación did not believe in fate. This may have been a by-product of the sailor’s name of his father, Uxbal, had given him and the fact that Ulises detested ocean horizons – they were impermanent and appeared like waterfalls over which one could cascade into death. More likely his disbelief was a consequence of how Ulises was taken from Cuba as a young boy by his mother, Soledad, as a member of the now-infamous 1980 Mariel Boatlift. Uxbal had wanted the family to stay despite their poverty. They did have a sturdy house with a garden, tomatoes when others didn’t, but Soledad saw in Ulises a mind for school, and she worried about the state of young, pensive boys in Cuba. Bookworms were considered faggots, and though she did not think her son a homosexual, the state might, and she cringed at the thought of him in prison, or worse, at a rehabilitation camp.

Have you read this? What did you think about it?