Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #16

 It's Friday . . . time to share excerpts from one of my current reads with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

This week's selection:

 

 

Beginning:  I remember, in no particular order:

 

--a shiny inner wrist;

 

--steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;

 

--gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house;

 

--a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams;

 

--another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;

 

--bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.

 

This last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

 

My thoughts:  I find the opening somewhat mysterious.  It has me wondering who the narrator is and where the story is headed.  This book, which won the 2011 Man Booker prize, has been on my TBR list for some time now.  The reason I am reading it now is because one of my book clubs selected it for our October meeting.

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Page 56:  "For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn't work out--perhaps especially when it doesn't work out--promises that here is the thing that validates, that vindicates life."

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Overview from barnesandnoble.com: A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.

This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony thought he left this all behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

 

 

Enjoy life with books...

Catherine

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Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #16 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.