Hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader
Book Beginnings on Fridays as stated by the host was started:
"to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires."
You can share on Google + and social media , please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings
and there's also a Mr Linky on the host's blog.
When Emily Gordon, editor at a London publishing house, commissions an account of great English novelist Hugh Morton, she finds herself steering a tricky path between Morton's formidable widow, Jacqueline, who's determined to protect his secrets, and the biographer, charming and ambitious Joel Richards. But someone is sending Emily mysterious missives about Hugh Morton's past and she discovers a buried story that simply has to be told… One winter's day in 1948, nineteen year old Isabel Barber arrives at her Aunt Penelope's house in Earl's Court having run away from home to follow her star. A chance meeting with an East European refugee poet leads to a job with his publisher, McKinnon & Holt, and a fascinating career beckons. But when she develops a close editorial relationship with charismatic young debut novelist Hugh Morton and the professional becomes passionately personal, not only are all her plans put to flight, but she finds herself in a struggle for her very survival. Rachel Hore's intriguing and suspenseful new novel magnificently evokes the milieux of London publishing past and present and connects the very different worlds of two young women, Emily and Isabel, who through their individual quests for truth, love and happiness become inextricably linked.
Book Beginning : The Silent Tide by Rachel Hore
Prologue
Isabel
East Suffolk Coast, 31 January 1953
She couldn't say at first what woke her.
It was dark, very dark - and cold, a penetrating icy cold. Even under the bedclothes she shivered. Something was different; all her senses told her this. Outside, the wind was up, scuffling about under the eaves of her wooden beach house, shaking the glass in the window setting off strange creaks and sighs around her, as though the house was shifting in its sleep. There was an odd smell, too, of something dank and salty, and trickling sound like rain in the gutters. She threw back the blankets and swung her feet to the floor - only to snatch them back as they met several inches of water.
**
I am intrigued by this opening sentence, with just a few words I am drawn into the story and want to discover just what is happening. I want to know more about the wooden beach house, and why there is water seeping inside. Who is Isabel and what is she doing at the beach house in the penetrating cold and wet.....
Rachel Hore is one of my favourite dual time narrators - she commands your attention from the beginning and creates a seamless transition between past and present. I'm looking forward to reading this book - it's her latest, published by Simon and Schuster in June 2013.
A bit of book blurb thanks to Amazon.co.uk
**
Do let me know what you think , does the story sound appealing to you?
You can read my review of The Secret Tide here
You can read my review of The Secret Tide here
