How to Read Novels like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form

Foster notes how bookstore behavior demonstrates the importance of a novel’s first lines: Readers often decide whether to purchase a book after reading its front and back covers and its initial sentences. First lines thus have a huge responsibility: They must perform what Foster terms a “complex seduction” (21), convincing readers that a book is worth their time and money. An opening line like, “This is the saddest story I have ever heard” (The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford, 1915), immediately compels readers to continue reading to find out why the story is so sad. The rule about important first lines extends to the opening page. Making a promise to readers that the book is worth reading, the first page reveals as many as 18 (and possibly more) important elements about a novel.

The first of these elements is literary style: sentence length, vocabulary, and diction. Literary style becomes clear on the novel’s first page. Tone—whether ironic, elegiac, or dark—is also apparent from the first page. Foster cites the opening sentence of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice as an example of establishing a

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