Book Beginnings: Here Come the German and the Greeks

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How to Participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading. Then, if you would like, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. The link-up will be at A Few More Pages every Friday and will be open for the entire week.

I’m still slogging through A Clash of Kings, so it would be redundant to repost the opening. However, I am also listening to an audiobook, so I think I’ll post the opening to that particular book. It is The Ruins by Scott Smith. I first read this (in print) three years ago and loved it, so here is the beginning of The Ruins:

My Book Beginnings: “They met Mathias on a day trip from Cozumel. They’d hired a guide to take them snorkeling over a local wreck, but the buoy marking its location had broken off in the storm, and the guide was having difficulty finding it. So they were swimming about, looking at nothing in particular. Then Mathias rose toward them from the depths, like a merman, a scuba tank on his back. He smiled when they told him their situation, and led them to the wreck. He was German, dark from the sun, and very tall, with a blond crew cut and pale blue eyes. He had a tattoo of an eagle on his right forearm, black with red wings. He let them take turns borrowing his tank so they could drop down thirty feet and see the wreck up close. He was friendly in a quiet way, and his English was only slightly accented, and when they pulled themselves into their guide’s boat to head back to shore, he climbed in, too.

“They met the Greeks two nights later, back in Cancún, on a beach near their hotel. Stacy got drunk and made out with one of them. Nothing happened beyond that, but the Greeks always seemed to be turning up afterward, no matter what they were doing. None of them spoke Greek, of course, and the Greeks didn’t speak English, so it was mostly smiling and nodding and the occasional sharing of food or drinks. There were three Greeks—in their early twenties, like Mathias and the rest of them—and they seemed friendly enough, even if they did appear to be following them about” (1).

My Thoughts: Now, reading these two opening paragraphs one would never know that this was, in fact, a horror novel and quite a creepy one at that. Yet, there are some early stirrings of the uncanny going on in here that if you know your horror movies you can spot … and it certainly sets up the young Americans in trouble in a foreign country (none of whom really speak the language) very well. The Ruins does take some time to get started, though, and reader Patrick Wilson doesn’t necessarily do a stellar job of reading … I might call it passable. He certainly is no Frank Muller or Jim Dale or Campbell Scott or Ron McLarty. As for Smith’s book, you really do have to stick with it, because in spite of the opening, it does, in fact, get much better. (And much scarier.)