It was time to find more first sentences. I entered the library, and walked to a random stretch of shelf, and began pulling books and opening them, like a shark with a very specialized diet.
The one to catch my attention was Diana Abu-Jaber's novel Origin. I wasn't previously familiar with the author, although I looked her up later and saw she has won several awards, of which the PEN award may be the most prestigious. The book, and its first sentence, feel literary: "I spot her as soon as I get off the elevator on the fourth floor."
The first three words contain the most drama in the sentence: "I spot her." That's a different choice than loading the most impactful word at the end. These three words create a link between the narrator and another person. To spot someone is to recognize them, not just to see them. It means there is something identifiable and meaningful about the person you've noticed.
The next phrase marks a moment: "as soon as I get off the elevator." The impact of seeing the other person is immediate. The narrator doesn't need to process or search the surroundings. The one the narrator sees stands out the very first instant they are in the same room.
The final phrase marks a place: "on the fourth floor." With an elevator and a fourth floor, we know we are in a large building, the kind usually found in cities.
Elevators and fourth floors don't carry a lot of emotional weight. The sentence almost retreats from the intimacy and impact of two people connected by a line of sight ("I spot her") to mundane, impersonal details: "as soon as I get off the elevator on the fourth floor."
In other words, the rest of the sentence softens the impact of "I spot her" instead of raising it. That's a move that feels literary to me: quieting emotions, gentling impacts.
Another aspect of this sentence that feels literary is the strength of the rhythm. The sentence starts with three groups of three one-syllable words. It naturally breaks like this: I spot her / as soon as / I get off / the elevator / on the fourth floor. A fourth set of three would have become too blatant or monotonous. Changing the rhythm after three sets of three lets the sentence become more natural.
Finally, the form is first person, present tense. The narrator speaks as the central character, "I," and in the moment, "spot" – not third person, (most commonly he, she, or they) nor past (spotted). We will be looking out from the narrator's eyes, traveling tightly forward in time with them. Abu-Jaber makes elegant use of the difficulty of an "I" observing themselves, and of sharing the narrator's observations, as well as the slipperiness of a constant present, later in the book.
It was a quiet sentence, and it had enough to draw me in.
Graphic elements by Ken Silbert
Photo by Taya Iv on Unsplash