Anne Enright and The Forgotten Waltz: this is how books should begin

The worst thing about being so caught up in finishing your own book (I am, I think, 5,000 words shy of a complete Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA) prequel) is that when you steal time away for literature (away from your job, away from your duties, away from the laundry), you can't steal enough time for the work of others.

But two days ago, I downloaded my first NetGalley advanced reading copy—The Forgotten Waltz by the truly brilliant, often disturbing, completely original Anne Enright. I'm only thirty pages in. I'll be doing a full report here (as well as an interview with Ms. Enright, come October).  But on this gloriously weathered day, might I just suggest that this, these opening lines, is how books should begin.  The voice is true and firm and daring. There is no barrier between writer and reader. Present is past and past is present, and who doesn't want to know what has happened?

i met him in my sister's garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first.  There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the late summer light and the view.  I put him at the bottom of my sister's garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn.  Half five maybe.  It is half past five on a Wicklow summer Sunday when I see Sean for the first time.  There he is, where the end of my sister's garden becomes uncertain.

You want to know what I like in books?  I like this.