Kate's Blog

A little quiz

I do so love first lines. If I latch onto a good first line of something I'm writing, the rest flows so smoothly, at least for a little while. So here are some first lines from some of my favourite (famous) books. Can you guess what books they're from?

1. Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.

2. When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

3. There was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself - not just sometimes, but always.

4. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

5. The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

6. A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green.

7. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.

8. Mother died today.

9. Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

10. The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.

You can of course, find these on the internet, so no cheating!!

posted by Kate Hewitt at 12:56 PM