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Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Original poster

first lines of books

322 replies

Blandmum · 15/02/2006 17:08

Nice easy one to start us all off

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

Book and Author then you give one.

No googling allowed

OP posts:
Lonelymum · 15/02/2006 22:20

Wonder if anyone knows this?

"I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the little blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the valley."

Not exactly pithy, but that is half the clue.

Hausfrau · 15/02/2006 22:20

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JanH · 15/02/2006 23:35

Going from the valley must be Welsh, LM - maybe - ???

Original poster
Blandmum · 16/02/2006 07:14

How green was my Valley

OP posts:
carla · 16/02/2006 07:21

Message deleted

Dinosaur · 16/02/2006 15:43

Is it Under Milk Wood?

My suggestions: "April is the cruellest month"...

krabbiepatty · 16/02/2006 15:56

The wasteland

Lonelymum · 16/02/2006 20:12

Yes MB was right, How Green Was My Valley. I can just hear that opening sentence spoken with a Welsh accent!

Mercy · 16/02/2006 21:00

'The temperature hit ninety degrees the day she arrived'

(trashy but fab imo)

Hausfrau · 16/02/2006 21:13

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alexsmum · 16/02/2006 21:25

ok i have some.
the stooping figure of my mother,waist deep in the grassand caught there like a piece of sheep's wool,was the last i saw of my country home as i left it to discover the world.

Mercy · 16/02/2006 21:29

Clue, Valley

alexsmum · 16/02/2006 21:37

no offers?

WigWamBam · 16/02/2006 21:47

Valley of the Dolls, Jaqueline Suzan

alexsmum · 16/02/2006 21:49

as i walked out one midsummer morning by laurie lee

gladbag · 16/02/2006 22:00

Try this....

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God.

Mummia · 16/02/2006 22:58

A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving

poppadum · 17/02/2006 09:03

easy one here, but haven't had my coffee yet.

" I had a farm in Africa."

mummytosteven · 17/02/2006 09:03

Out of Africa?

poppadum · 17/02/2006 09:08

got it in one, mummytosteven. too easy, I know.

Ellbell · 17/02/2006 13:19

OK... specially for Hausfrau

Halfway through the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood...

Or, another one...

I was born in Bombay ... once upon a time

poppadum · 17/02/2006 16:24

is the second one "Midnight's Children?", ellebell

Hausfrau · 17/02/2006 19:42

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Ellbell · 17/02/2006 20:19

That's right Hausfrau (it's the beginning of Dante's Divine Comedy. And, yes, the other is Midnight's Children.

How about: 'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice'?

Hazellnut · 17/02/2006 21:46

100 years of solitude ?