23. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy (1985)
"See the child." No contemporary American author achieves the timeworn, biblical quality found in the prose of Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian, his haunting 1985 masterpiece, features an ostensible protagonist known simply as "the kid" and his doomed involvement with the monstrous Judge Holden. There is little doubt that the judge is a force of evil (that phrase hardly seems to do him justice), but the kid is - well, what is the kid? With an utter lack of interiority, McCarthy gives us little indication as to whether we should sympathize, pity, root for or be detested by the kid. The one thing we cannot do, however, is ignore him, as McCarthy demands from the first line: "See the child." If you haven't read anything by Cormac McCarthy, I highly recommend you remedy that ASAP.
22. The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley (1953)
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." Like Ethan Frome, The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley begins with a narrator introducing the story from a somewhat-removed perspective. This is another example of an opening line that isn't necessarily applicable only to the book it happens to open, but even as a self-contained piece of wisdom it still manages to link the events of the novel proper. I recently read and quite enjoyed The Go-Between - unfortunately, from what I can glean from the internet, Hartley's first line seems to have achieved much more fame than the rest of the book.
21. Peter Pan, James M. Barrie (1911)
"All children, except one, grow up." Look up from your computer and turn to a friend in the room (you do have a friend, don't you?) and read the above line aloud to them. Chances are, they'll guess that the line is from Peter Pan. They (and you) may be envisioning the Disney movie, but J.M. Barrie's novel on which the film is based begins with this perfect opener. It doesn't give much away, and in fact the mystery is tantalizing. But if you're familiar with the boy who doesn't grow up, as most are, the line goes from saying not very much to saying it all.