You've Got Five Pages, French Braid by Anne Tyler, to Tell Me You're Good.

The first chapter can make or break a reader's engagement with a story. We as writers must craft brilliant opening pages in order to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it! I'm not going to type up my little meandering to the question "Why I don't read literary fiction" here for you, but I will say that the first pages of French Braid by Anne Tyler reinforce the feelings I describe in that meander. To be blunt, I like knowing what I am getting into, and genres give me that sense. Literary fiction can go to any old place, and for some folks, they just want to enjoy that journey. Good for them! Nothing wrong with that, especially with a writer like Anne Tyler. Her prose here is easy on the eyes and ears, and the personality of the narrator comes through in these little parenthetical asides that made me smile now and then.  This book, though, is a family drama with events spanning decades. For some folks, that's all they want in a story. For me, not so much. And while the characters I meet in the first few pages are perfect fits for a family drama, they also, frankly, could fit into any genre fiction's opener, and that kind of generic impression put me off as a writer. What will you make of these first five pages? Let's find out!