First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; Chris Bohjalian

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where I share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book I am reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us? This week's pick is by a favorite author - started it at lunch yesterday and loving it so far.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday - July 2014

 Prologue~

"I built an igloo against the cold out of black plastic trash bags filled with wet leaves.  It wasn't perfect.  The winds were coming across the lake, and the outside wall that faced the water was flat--not like the igloos I had seen on TV somewhere or I guess in a book.  It looked like the wall on the inside of a cave: flat and ind of scaly.  But the outside wall that faced the city looked round like a melon.  I couldn't stand all the way up inside it, but in the middle I could crouch like a hunchback.  It was big enough for three people to lie down if you curled up, and one night we had to squeeze in four.  But most of the time it was just Cameron and me.  I really had to trust the fuck out of someone before I would let then anywhere near Cameron in the night. But, the truth is, people came and went.  You know how it is. Especially in the winter.  But the igloo kept me warm. Warmer, anyway.  I mean, it's not like I got frostbite.  I knew kids and grownups who did.  I knew one kid who got gangrene.  They say the doctors had to cut off both his feet, but I don't know that for a fact because I never saw him again."

Chapter 1 ~

"It was the middle of June, and we only had two days of school left.  We had one more day of exams and the one day when most of us would either not show up or, if we did, the teachers were pretty chill and didn't mind what we did so long as we didn't get stoned in their face or do something ridiculous that would them look bad or get ourselves killed.  I was in eleventh grade.  It was midmorning, and I had just taken my physics final.  I did okay, I think, but who knows? Doesn't matter now and, to be honest, I really didn't care that much even then.  Besides, I was going to be a poet and a novelist, if only because I figured poet and novelist was a career choice that meant little or no human interaction.  I kind of understood at a young age that I didn't play well with most other kids in the sandbox. (Not all, of course. I mean, I had friends. Not many, but a few.)  Anyway, I really believed I was going to write great books.  I honestly thought like that.  I was going to go to Amherst -- the town, not the college, because there was no way I was getting into the college--and find out who Emily Dickinson actually was.  You know, get the real dish.  Discover things about her that no one else knew.  Friends. Lovers. A secret society. Not kidding.  I thought like that. We had the same first name, and her poems were as short as mine. Hers, of course, were better.  But you see my point. There wasn't a lot of logic to the connection.  Still, she wasn't hugely social, and we had that in common, too."

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What do you think? Would you keep reading? 

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