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Opening Lines

I heard a thing on the radio the other day where people were discussing their favourite opening lines from novels. Among all the very high-flown items, and several people citing Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier; "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly again.", I found myself fondly thinking of my own favourite. This one's been top of my list since I first read it twenty-plus years ago. Not particularly high-flown, and certainly not that well-known, it's the opening line from Miss Mapp, by E.F. Benson:

Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she took advantage of that fact by being just a year or two older.

Makes me smile every time.