Openings

dancingchaplain posted her all-time favorite first page of a book, which got me thinking about my all-time favorite first sentence (which I think I may have posted here before, but probably long before most of you were on my Friends list).


"Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, overly educated and excessively rational, knowing right from wrong and fancy from fact, woke in a nest of marten and fox pelts to the sight of an eagle circling overhead, and saw at once that it could not be far to Paradise."

From Into the Wilderness, by Sara Donati


The first time I read this sentence, I didn't get any farther. I set the book down very carefully, thought about the sentence for a long time, picked the book up, read the sentence again, set the book down, picked it up, read the sentence a third time, and resisted the urge to throw the book across the room and never again presume to call myself a writer.

Shall we meme this? Which are your favorite first sentence/paragraph/pages?