Page 4 | Guess the opening lines...

kinkytoes · 2026-05-14T14:02:19+00:00

Hi all, hope it's ok to start this here. Thought it might be fun and stretch the old grey matter a bit. I'll attach a shot of some opening lines and whoever guesses correctly post their own? We could all just post pics but then we might lose track. I don't mind. Let me know what you think (of the idea, and the opening lines here - hopefully started off with an easyish one but let me know if any clues are needed!) If it's being done elsewhere please someone direct me 😊

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 18/05/2026 07:42

Very likely! I love that book.

pollyhemlock · 18/05/2026 07:33

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 17/05/2026 22:01

“It may be only blackmail,” said the man in the taxi hopefully. The fog was like a saffron blanket soaked in ice-water. It had hung over London all day and at last was beginning to descend. The sky was yellow as a duster and the rest was a granular black, overprinted in grey and lightened by occasional slivers of bright fish colour as a policeman turned in his wet cape. Already the traffic was at an irritable crawl. By dusk it would be stationary. To the west the Park dripped wretchedly and to the north the great railway terminus slammed and banged and exploded hollowly about its affairs. Between lay winding miles of butter-coloured stucco in every conceivable state of repair.

Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham.
@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I have a sense that we share a similar sense in literature!

tothesea · 17/05/2026 23:03

@clary I read it as a teenager and was completely bewitched by it. I’ve put off rereading in case it’s not how I remembered but I’d pulled it out of my bookshelf today which is why I put it up here. However there is no way I would have recognised it from the opening lines!

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 23:01

‘All day it has been windy…..’ and “It may only be blackmail….” both sound intriguing. Looking forward to finding out what the names of the books.

OnlyHereForTheChristmasBoard · 17/05/2026 22:07

clary · 17/05/2026 21:35

ahhhhhh Jay McInerney - Brightness Falls. Love some of the writing in that

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Correct. I'm rereading the Calloway trilogy before reading the new one (so I suppose it's not a trilogy now, but whatever the correct word is for a four-novel cycle...)

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 17/05/2026 22:01

“It may be only blackmail,” said the man in the taxi hopefully. The fog was like a saffron blanket soaked in ice-water. It had hung over London all day and at last was beginning to descend. The sky was yellow as a duster and the rest was a granular black, overprinted in grey and lightened by occasional slivers of bright fish colour as a policeman turned in his wet cape. Already the traffic was at an irritable crawl. By dusk it would be stationary. To the west the Park dripped wretchedly and to the north the great railway terminus slammed and banged and exploded hollowly about its affairs. Between lay winding miles of butter-coloured stucco in every conceivable state of repair.

pollyhemlock · 17/05/2026 21:52

fantam · 14/05/2026 20:30

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.

I don’t think anyone has answered this one yet. It’s Jude the Obscure.

clary · 17/05/2026 21:38

tothesea · 17/05/2026 10:48

All day it has been windy-strange weather for late July-the wind swirling through the hedges like an invisible flood-tide among seaweed; tugging, compelling them in its own direction, dragging them one way until the patches of elder and privet sagged outward from the tougher stretches of blackthorn on either side. It ripped the purple clematis from its trellis and whirled away twigs and green leaves from the oaks at the bottom of the shrubbery.

And this one – gutted I didn't recognise it. Or rather I did (unlike a lot of the books on this thread that so many PPs know!) but I couldn't place it – it was nagging at me so I looked it up. This is a novel no one has ever heard of but I found it bewitching and so so memorable, even years later.

(not put the answer in as I cheated so someone else may get it!)

clary · 17/05/2026 21:35

OnlyHereForTheChristmasBoard · 17/05/2026 17:15

The last time I saw Russell and Corinne together was the weekend of the final softball game between the addicts and the depressives.

ahhhhhh Jay McInerney - Brightness Falls. Love some of the writing in that

HelenaWilson · 17/05/2026 20:11

I vaguely recalled that she was a contemporary of Vera Brittain. Looking her up, I see that her brother Ralph Bagnold was interesting too, in a completely different field.

(Have never read National Velvet, but of course was aware of the film with Elizabeth Taylor.)

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 19:14

pollyhemlock · 17/05/2026 19:09

I enjoyed it when I read it despite not being at all into horses. The characters are so well drawn.

Yes I agree. And although the story was implausible, somehow it was convincing.
I must try some of Enid Bagmold’s adult fiction. I believe she had quite a following but as far as I know she isn’t read much these days.

pollyhemlock · 17/05/2026 19:09

I enjoyed it when I read it despite not being at all into horses. The characters are so well drawn.

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 19:06

PollyHemlock yes! IMPRESSED.
I haven’t seen or heard of that book for decades. I tried it on my DD when she was a horse mad 10 year old but it wasn’t for her.

pollyhemlock · 17/05/2026 19:01

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 18:02

UNEARTHLY humps of land curved into the darkening sky like the backs of browsing pigs, like the rumps of elephants. At night when the stars rose over them they looked like a starlit herd of divine pigs. The villagers called them Hullocks.

This was one of my favourite books as a child but I haven’t known that many others who’ve read it.

National Velvet ?

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 18:02

UNEARTHLY humps of land curved into the darkening sky like the backs of browsing pigs, like the rumps of elephants. At night when the stars rose over them they looked like a starlit herd of divine pigs. The villagers called them Hullocks.

This was one of my favourite books as a child but I haven’t known that many others who’ve read it.

tothesea · 17/05/2026 17:58

I’m inordinately pleased I knew it!

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 17:57

@tothesea yes!

tothesea · 17/05/2026 17:18

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 16:03

I was set down from the carrier’s cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt through the air like monkeys.

Cider With Rosie

OnlyHereForTheChristmasBoard · 17/05/2026 17:15

The last time I saw Russell and Corinne together was the weekend of the final softball game between the addicts and the depressives.

HelenaWilson · 17/05/2026 16:30

My guess would be Village School.

Yes Village School. Must put on my re-read list; it's a long time since I read the Fairacre books.

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 16:03

I was set down from the carrier’s cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt through the air like monkeys.

DeanElderberry · 17/05/2026 15:55

My guess would be Village School.

Miss Read, anyway,

I get the impression lots of us enjoy the same comfort reads.

HelenaWilson · 17/05/2026 15:33

The first day of term has a flavour that is all its own; a whiff of lazy days behind and a foretaste of the busy future. The essential thing, for a village schoolmistress on such a day, is to get up early.

HelenaWilson · 17/05/2026 15:28

I wanted to do The Secret Garden but the heroine’s name is mentioned in the first para so too obvious.

Yes I rejected Secret Garden for the same reason. Also Ballet Shoes.

38thparallel · 17/05/2026 14:44

Can we do poems as well?