David Abrams and I "met" each other in 2001. That is, I read some of his reviews, we emailed, he joined the EWN. We've still yet to meet face-to-face, but have had some fun experiences together - in 2005, David was deployed to Kuwait, then Iraq. During that time, he kept a detailed diary (this was, I believe, a year after receiving his MFA), which he shared with some friends. This led to my sharing his writing with the EWN members, at first strictly via email, but then, after David had found an agent, I was able to post excerpts at the EWN Blog. Also, the next SSM - VH post I do will be of David's short story that I included in the anthology.
The following has been written by David Abrams - those of you that have been reading all month long know just how much I agree with his opening sentence:
First lines are the handshakes writers give their
readers. As we slide into the story,
we’ll always remember that first impression of the opening sentences’ firm,
self-assured grip. If we don’t remember those
first lines, it’s probably because the author gave us a clammy, limp-fingered
greeting. In her debut story collection,
Love
Stories in This Town, novelist Amanda Eyre Ward has no problem with
“gripping” first lines. I have always been
a sucker for first sentences. I can
distinctly remember specific moments in my life when the breath was sucked from
my lungs by Raymond Carver (My friend Mel
McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives
him the right.—“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”) and Richard
Ford (All of this that I am about to tell
happened when I was only fifteen years old, in 1959, the year my parents were
divorced, the year when my father killed a man and went to prison for it, the
year I left home and school, told a lie about my age to fool the Army, and then
did not come back. The year, in other words, when life changed for all of us
and forever—ended, really, in a way none of us could ever have imagined in our
most brilliant dreams of life.—“Optimists”). Ward, in my humble opinion, is their equal
(at least in the First Lines Dept.). The
dozen tales in Love Stories in This Town are sharp-focused family snapshots,
catching husbands, wives, children, parents, lovers and ex-lovers in moments of
confusion, hope, paranoia, delight, resentment and all the other ingredients of
the human stew. I could go on at length
about the many charms of the book, but I’ll just use this space to pinpoint
some of Ward’s excellent opening lines:
They
told us the baby was dead, and two days later we were on a plane to Texas.
("The Stars Are Bright in Texas")
A woman had drowned in the lake, but that
did not make it any less picturesque.
(“On Messalonskee Lake")
I had heard about the rib, of course, but
did not expect it to be at the Smiths’ Christmas party. Yet there it was, on
the mantel, sandwiched between a bowl of cinnamon-scented potpourri and a holly
sprig. Merry Christmas! Here’s our daughter’s rib. (“The Way the Sky Changed”)
The man Lola loved wasn’t marrying her, and
she didn’t know what to wear to the wedding. (“Miss Montana's Wedding Day”)
Lola thought the baby shower would be
canceled due to the beheading, but she was wrong. (“Motherhood and Terrorism”)
And this, from my favorite story in the collection—“Butte as in Beautiful”—which,
if memory serves me right, was the very first sentence of Ward’s I ever read,
years ago when someone sent me a link to an on-line version of the story. The rest of the story, as with all of the
other examples I cited above, more than fulfills that tantalizing handshake promise
of the opening words. I dare anyone to
stop reading after a sentence like this:
It’s a crappy coincidence that on the day
James asks for my hand in marriage, there is a masturbator loose in the
library.
Comments