"Saturday night."
-- The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga
What is with the books I'm reading lately and their lame opening non-sentences?
Here's the whole first paragraph:
Saturday night. End of September. Florence, Italy. Margot Harrington excused herself from a table at Il Fiasco in Via dei Servi, saying that if she had another grappa she'd be too tired to walk home and that if she drank another espresso she'd never get to sleep.Now, starting with that last sentence -- the first full sentence of the bunch -- would have been a bang-up way to start the story. Skip the stepping stones and go straight to the front door.
