The Keepin’ It Real Book Club

Wish I’d said it myself: Lisa Moore’s astute argument for character driven novels (From Saturday’s Globe) :

Character is plot, because character moves, leaves traces, is formed and reformed and doesn’t stand still. Character is action. Character is a shifting, mesmeric entity in the hands of a skilled writer, and it is the changes in a character that create energy in a novel, that propel it forward.

One of my favourite opening paragraphs (from one of my favourite books). It’s got it all — humour, foreshadowing, history, and a wonderful inversion of the fairy tale opening while maintaining many of its fantastical elements:

I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it’s important to be more . . . On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. There were gasps. And, outside the window, fireworks and crowds. A few seconds later, my father broke his big toe; but his accident was a mere trifle when set beside what had befallen me in that benighted moment, because thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly [...]