Book beginnings is a meme set up by Rose City Reader. Every Friday post the first line, or few lines, of the book you’re reading along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Then add a link to your post on Rose City Reader’s blog.

My Book Beginning

The Things We keep by Sally Hepworth

Fifteen months ago…

No one trusts anything I say. If I point out, for example, that the toast is burning or that it’s time for the six o’clock news, people marvel. How about that? Well done, Anna. Maybe if I were eighty-eight instead of thirty-eight, I wouldn’t care. Then again, maybe I would. As a new resident of Rosalind House, an assisted-living facility for senior citizens, I’m having a new appreciation for the hardships of the elderly.

I know from the blurb that this character is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. This opening really grabs me though because Anna feels she’s not trusted to know things by the other residents because she is so much younger than them, but actually, because of her disease, she is an unreliable narrator and as readers we don’t know yet whether she is right about why they don’t trust her, or whether it’s because her disease if more advanced than she herself is aware. I think this is going to be an emotional but also good read. I can’t wait to read more. The Things We Keep is due to be published in January so I plan to read it next month.