Week #36 – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

Last year on Mondays we had fun with books. This year, we'll look at most of the same books but also some new ones, and see if the first line [or first paragraph] met the goal of a first line which is ==> to hook the reader's attention.

Here are some tips on writing a first line

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/tips-for-writing-the-opening-line-of-your-novel

Week #36 – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion,_the_Witch_and_the_Wardrobe

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-thelionthewitchandthewardrobe/lewiscs-thelionthewitchandthewardrobe-00-h.html

First published: October 16, 1950

Here's what the story is about: The first book in the Chronicles of Narnia. Siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, step through a wardrobe door and into Narnia, a land frozen in eternal winter and enslaved by the White Witch. Aslan the Great Lion gives his life to save one of the children and later rises from the dead, an allegory of Jesus Christ. Aslan and the children work to free Narnia from the White Witch.

First line/paragraph:

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs. Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair, which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it. 

This story has an obvious storyteller and is in omniscient POV. The first paragraph is an introduction and gives background, The reader is introduced to four children and various other characters, and we are told the children were evacuated from London because of war. We don't have anything of the plot yet, just this background. I'm not hooked yet but I'll probably give it a page or two to see if something happens.

Does this first line/paragraph hook your attention? If you had never heard of this story, would you buy this book in 2024? Knowing the story, would you change the first line? Tell us in the comments!