At some point I will get around to my theory of first lines (and my perhaps potted justification for thinking they let me know whether a novel is worth reading). But for this entry, I’ll just say that it’s this opening, a bit self-effacing yet so elegant, that started me reading Penelope Fitzgerald. Not something that I have any plan of stopping.
In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not.
The first line of her 1978 novel The Bookshop.
A Few Reasonable Words 