So I was going to talk about Perfect Peace by Daniel Black, but running late, so I had to change. I looked up 100 must-read LGBTI+ books, and I picked one. I feel pretty dumb about it since when I looked it up on Goodreads, it is marked as a classic, so a lot of people must know about it, and I didn’t know it existed, nor had I ever heard of it. However, I’m now wondering: what makes a novel a classic? First Lines Friday is a weekly feature for book lovers that was formerly hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
- Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page.
- Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
- Finally… reveal the book!
Note: The original host blog does not appear to be active any longer, but if anyone knows of a new host, please share the information!
First Lines:
The six pieces contained in this volume form a roughly continuous narrative. They are the only existing fragments of what was originally planned as a huge episodic novel of pre-Hitler Berlin. I had intended to call it The Lost. My old title has been changed, however; it is too grandiose for this short loosely connected sequence of diaries and sketches.
Readers of Mr Norris Changes Trains (published in the United States as The Last of Mr Norris) may notice that certain characters and situations in that novel overlap and contradict what I have written here — Sally Bowles, for instance, would have run into Mr Norris on Frl. Schroeder’s staircase; Christopher Isherwood would certainly have come home one evening to find William Bradshaw asleep in his bed. The explanation is simple: The adventures of Mr Norris once formed part of The Lost itself.
Goodreads Blurb:
First published in 1934, Goodbye to Berlin has been popularized on stage and screen by Julie Harris in I Am a Camera and Liza Minelli in Cabaret. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy with its mobs and millionaires. The shadow of Hitler looms menacingly, towering higher and higher. Goodbye to Berlin is inhabited by a wealth of characters: the unforgettable and “divinely decadent” Sally Bowles; plump Fraülein Schroeder, who considers reducing her Büste to relieve heart palpitations; Peter and Otto, a gay couple struggling with their relationship; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family the Landauers.
Goodreads Link Here
Now tell me, did you know about this novel, or am I the only one clueless?