She placed it on the shelf beside its sister, and pondered a thousand questions. Attend to what appears before you, she thought. That is what I must teach myself to do.
Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records, Chapter 3
#FirstSentences No. 1
From
Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records
Half a century ago, during the rainy season, when I was seven years old, my father and I reached the Sea. It was evening and the buildings were coloured glass against the night. I remember that we disembarked into water, we crossed the sand, we entered a pale door of the sea.
We must certainly leave for Rome tomorrow, Mrs. Johnson thought. She heard herself thinking it, at some distance, as though in a dream.
She entered thus from that day a conscious duality of existence, knowing what she should and must do and making no motion toward doing it . . . to Mrs. Johnson the experience was strange and new. It confused her.
Elizabeth Spencer, The Light in the Piazza