First Chapter ~ First Paragraph (October 24)

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

This week I’ve decided to share the opening of a book I will be reading soon Three Days and a Life by Pierre Lemaitre which was published in July 2017.

Blurb

Antoine is twelve years old. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother in Beauval, a small, backwater town surrounded by forests, where everyone knows everyone’s business, and nothing much ever happens. But in the last days of 1999, a series of events unfolds, culminating in the shocking vanishing without trace of a young child. The adults of the town are at a loss to explain the disappearance, but for Antoine, it all begins with the violent death of his neighbour’s dog. From that one brutal act, his fate and the fate of his neighbour’s six year old son are bound forever.

In the years following Rémi’s disappearance, Antoine wrestles with the role his actions played. As a seemingly inescapable net begins to tighten, breaking free from the suffocating environs of Beauval becomes a gnawing obsession. But how far does he have to run, and how long will it take before his past catches up with him again? Amazon

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First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro

1999

1

In late December 1999, an alarming series of tragic events struck Beuval, the most important of which, it seemed, was the disappearance of little Rémi Desmedt. In this region of lush, dense woodland that moved to its slow, ineluctable rhythms, the sudden disappearance of the child was met by stunned shock and was considered by many of the residence as a harbinger of catastrophes to come.
For Antoine, who was at the centre of the tragedy, it all began with the death of the dog Ulysses. Do not trouble to ask why its owner, Monsieur Desmedt, gave this scrawny, long-legged white-and-tan mongrel the name of a Greek hero, it will be one more mystery in this story.

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Well the author wastes no time in ploughing into the facts around the story so that second paragraph about the dog comes almost as a bit of a relief as we ponder on a dog’s name rather than the disappearance of Rémi Desmedt.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?