First impressions

In The Art of Fiction, David Lodge refers to the beginning of a novel as "a threshold, separating the real world we inhabit from the world the novelist has imagined". He goes on to describe how we usually read a novel slowly and hesitantly at first, as we unconsciously weigh up whether all the effort of absorbing and remembering the information presented to us (characters' names, their relationships, contextual details of time and place) is going to be worthwhile. "Most readers will give an author the benefit of the doubt for at least a few pages," he continues, "before deciding to back out over the threshold." Sometimes, however, the reader is "hooked" by the very first sentence.

One author who manages to "hook" me time and time again is William Boyd. He did this with the first sentence (save for the brief prologue) of Brazzaville Beach:

I never really warmed to Clovis - he was far too stupid to inspire real affection - but he always claimed a corner of my heart, largely, I supposed, because of the way he instinctively and unconsciously cupped his genitals whenever he was alarmed or nervous.

It makes more sense a paragraph or two later, when (and in saying this I'm not giving away anything that isn't discernible from the illustration on the front cover) it becomes clear that Clovis is a chimpanzee.

Boyd also had me hooked by the very first sentence of The Blue Afternoon:

I remember that afternoon, not long into our travels, sitting on deck in the mild mid-Atlantic sun on a slightly smirched and foggy day, the sky a pale washed-out blue above the smokestacks, that I asked my father what it felt like to pick up a knife and make an incision into living human flesh.

Compared to these, the first sentence of The New Confessions ("My first act on entering this world was to kill my mother") is positively stark, although the novel itself is more voluminous than the other two put together.

I was first introduced to William Boyd several years ago by Ultra 151, who recommended I read Any Human Heart. I enjoyed that book. However, Boyd didn't figure again in my life until a couple of Christmases ago, when I bought Restless as a present for my sister (and borrowed it to read as soon as she was finished). Since then I've been steadily working my way through his earlier novels, starting with The New Confessions, a hardback copy of which I picked up secondhand for just a few dollars. And as I mentioned the other day, I've recently bought The Blue Afternoon.

Incidentally, according to various (admittedly fairly old) rumours floating around the blogosphere, The Blue Afternoon is destined to be turned into a movie directed by Brian De Palma. Boyd wanted Daniel Craig to have a role (the two have been friends since they worked together on a movie called The Trench, which Boyd directed), but apparently the 007 actor, whom I first saw in the brilliant Our Friends in the North, is a bit busy these days.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 79.9km
Days left until departure: 65