“Lightning sought our mother out, when she was a young girl in Brown County, Indiana.” is the opening sentence from a book entitled Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett, and in my opinion, it is the best opening line from any 21st century novel.
“A screaming comes across the sky.” from Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
Finally, the greatest opening line of all time must go, again in my opinion, to “Rage—Goddess sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,” from The Iliad by Homer translated by Robert Fagles.
The reader is shocked immediately by all three examples and thrust into the trajectory of the plot. We feel the opening of events. The first sentence of a book is its single most important one. It has an enormous amount of responsibility. It has to grab the reader’s attention, and it has to subtly inform him of the subject and contents of the book. The images in this first sentence are crucial.