A is for Alibi II: Character and Recommendation.

Isn't that a brilliant first paragraph? It tells us that it's a first-person narrative, important facts about the narrator...and what the character herself thinks is important about herself.

It tells us that she killed someone recently, and sets up the plot right away. Who did she kill? Why did she say 'kill,' not 'murder?' What led up to such a terrible ending? Did her action strengthen her or harm her?

Why does she interject her recitation of herself with a description of her housing situation? We each have a standard self-decription, don't we? Why isKinsey's bookended with her cold statement that she killed someone two days ago?

Whew. Makes me want to read it! I already did, and it was a page-turner. I finished the whole book in about 4 days; I barely put it down. Even better...the plot lasts till the very last page...even to the last sentence. Good job, Sue Grafton!

I recommend it--but be warned, it was a bit too sexual for kids to read without parents' pre-assessment. (ie, I would not give it to my teenager to read.)

A is for Alibi I: First Sentence/First Paragraph

My name is Kinsey Millhone.

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My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I'm thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yeserday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind. I'm a nice person and I have a lot of friends. My apartment is small but I like living in a cramped space. I've lived in trailers most of my life, but latey they've been getting too elaborate for my taste, so now I live in one room, a "bachelorette." I don't have a pet. I don't have houseplants. I spend a lot of time on the road and I don't like leaving things behind. Aside for the hasards of my profession, my life has always been ordinary, uneventful, and good. Killing someone feels odd to me and I haven't quite sorted it thorugh. I've already given a statement to the police, which I initialed page by page and then signed. I filled out a similar report for the office files. The language in both documents is neutral, the teminology oblique, and neither says quite enough.

Under the Tuscan Sun IV: First Paragraph

I am about to buy a house in a foreign country. A house with the beautiful name of Bramasole. It is tall, square, and apricot-colored with faded green shutters, ancient tile roof, and an iron balcony on the second level, where ladies might have sat with their fans to watch some spectacle below. But below, overgrown briars, tangles of roses, and knee-high weeds run rampant. The balcony faces southeast, looking into a deep valley, into the Tuscan Apennines. When it rains or when the light changes, the facade of the house turns gold, sienna, ocher; a previous scarlet paint job seeps through in rosy spots lke a box of crayons left to melt in the sun. In places where the stucco has fallen away, rugged stone shows what the exterior once was. The house rises above a strada bianca, a road white with pebbles, on a terraced slab of hillside covered with fruit and olive trees. Bramasole: from bramare, to yearn for, and sole, sun: something that yearns for the sun, and yes, I do.

Under the Tuscan Sun III: First Sentence

I am about to buy a house in a foreign country.

Wuthering Heights: Why I Quit

The dialect. I quit reading because of the dialect. Bah. Humbug!

Under the Tuscan Sun II: The Choice of Place

For me, house, set in its landscape, always has been crypto-primo image land. Bachelard pushed me to realize that the houses we experience deeply take us back to the first house. In my mind, however, it's not just to the first house, but to the first concept of self. Southerners have a gene, as yet undiscovered in the DNA spirals, that causes them to believe that place is fate. Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.

Under the Tuscan Sun I

Whew! It has been a long, long time. I'm sorry. I've been reading...just not blogging about it. So sue me! Hah.

I have been reading Under the Tuscan Sun and loving it. Frances Mayes' descriptions...her vivid language, verbs, adjectives....her observtions of Italian life and consequently, American life...it's been great.

It's nothing like the movie. I like the movie, but the movie is no Citizen Kane or Little Women. It's not a watch-again-and-again movie, if you get my drift. But the book! It's been good, good, good to read a book 'thats more setting than plot.