“The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.”
'Milkman,' by Anna Burns
"Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third."
Jodi Picoult- Second Glances
I read this book because I read the opening sentence in a bookstore. Is there higher praise to be given to an opening line than to purchase the book?
"Catherine Tekawitha, who are you?" - Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen.
While the novel isn't actually about Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (an indigenous woman who was beatified by John Paul II and canonized by Benedict XVI, but she was just a revered early indigenous Christian when Cohen wrote the novel), she's a recurring image/theme and the opening sets that up.
(I am currently reading The Favorite Game, his first novel, but it's in an omnibus edition with Beautiful Losers so I may re-read that novel as well).
