Opening lines for a new year

Sylvia Plath did it in an oven. Virginia Woolf in a river. And Ernest Hemingway with a pistol. Or was it a shotgun? Something phallic, anyway. What I like about these opening lines from the English version of Griet skryf ‘n sprokie by Marita van der Vyfer is the way they manage to be literary, funny and to hint at depressing possibilities for Griet at the same time. I can’t remember much of this novel (read years ago) but I was reminded of it sleeping in my sister and brother-in-law’s study on h