A strong opening line to a piece of fiction cannot be over-valued. Sure there are some great opening lines to mediocre or bad novels. Charles Dickens wrote one of the most famous opening lines ever in his novel A Tale of Two Cities [1] and yet I despise that novel with a searing hatred usually reserved for the Los Angeles Lakers or broccoli. Then there are completely forgettable opening lines to brilliant works. Anyone remember the opening lines to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment [2] or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird [3]? Didn’t think so, but the rest of those novels haunt the reader for a long time. Sometimes the strength of the opening line can only be appreciated after reading the whole work and going back to the beginning as is the case of the seemingly innocuous opening to Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay [4].

If an author can begin with something that immediately piques the your interest and draws you into the subsequent sentences, then he or she has immediately gained the high ground. Below are my top-5 favorite opening lines to novels. This is a tough one to narrow down and I decided to limit the list to novels I’ve read. And since I haven’t read every novel written I’m sure I’m missing some excellent examples. Please tell me your favorites.

1. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
2. My name is Asher Lev, the Asher Lev, about whom you have read in newspapers and magazines, about whom you talk so much at your dinner affairs and cocktail parties, the notorious and legendary Lev of the Brooklyn Crucifixion.—Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev (1972)
3. Maman died today.—Albert Camus, The Stranger, (1942, translation by Matthew Ward, 1988)
4. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.—Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)
5. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.—J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937). Talk about a line that opened into well more than any reader could have imagined.

Also check out the American Book Review’s list of 100 Best First Lines from Novels. I plan on doing a post on great last lines.

[1]“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” (1859)

[2]“At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down on to the street from the little room he rented from some tenants on S——Lane and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards K—-n Bridge.” (1866, translation by David McDuff, 2003)

[3]“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” (1960)

[4]“In later years, when holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier’s greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.” (2000)