I am going through a Tartt phase, non-chronologically.
I wasn’t sure about the most recent The Goldfinch (my first read, it just didn’t grab me), loved The Secret History (it surprised and seduced), and tonight have embarked upon The Little Friend.
Which brings me to openers. I am obsessed by first sentences and paragraphs. Think Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart:
“My father still lives back in the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn’t yet missed a day of letting me down.”
Storytelling magic.
In Tartt’s The Little Friend, the opener is good, very good:
“For the rest of her life, Charlotte Cleve would blame herself for her son’s death because she had decided to have Mother’s Day dinner at six in the evening instead of noon, after church, which is when the Cleves usually had it.”
Loaded.
Tantalising.
Irresistible.
CQ
Living through the Arts 