Tuesday, September 24, 2013

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #32


 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. It's an opportunity to share the first paragraph(s) of a book I am currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

This week I'm featuring the opening paragraph from The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian, a book I purchased this week, and that I will be reading for one of my book clubs. Club members were so impressed with The Sandcastle Girls, which we read last month, that we decided to select another book written by Bohjalian. 

 The Light in the Ruins  
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 
Publication date: July 9, 2013

Part One

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 "A woman is sitting before an art nouveau vanity, brushing her hair in the mirror.  It is, at least according to the police report, somewhere between midnight and three in the morning, on the first Tuesday of June 1955.  For dinner she ate a small portion of an impossibly rich pasta--a fettuccini with pecorino cheese and great ladles of truffle oil--at a restaurant popular with wealthy American and British expatriates five blocks west of the Uffizi and a block north of the Arno.  She was one of the few Italians there who weren't part of the kitchen or wait staff.  She has since bathed, soaping off both her own perfume and the cologne that was worn by her dinner companion--the fellow who had come back here to the apartment, made love with her on the thin bed no more than three feet from the vanity, and then left.  He was a suspect in the murder investigation, but only briefly.  If he had had even the slightest inclination to spend the evening, there is every chance that I would have executed him that night, too."


What do you think?  Would you continue reading?  I am intrigued by the narrator's voice and the setting, not to mention that she appears to be a murderer.  Bohjalian's historical novels are well researched and I am looking forward to reading--and discussing--the author's latest work!


Catherine  
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First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #32 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.

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