Essence of…

In Competition 2832 you were invited to compose what might be a quintessential opening paragraph from the pen of either Graham Greene, Frank Kafka, Jane Austen or Tolkien.

It was a tall order to channel such literary genius, but on the whole you did it pretty well. Greene, with his immediately distinctive voice, was by far the most popular choice. As Nicholas Shakespeare wrote, ‘It rarely takes more than three …sentences to situate you in Greeneland, a place whose moral temperature would wring sweat out of a fridge.’

Kafka proved the most difficult nut to crack. None of you quite managed to capture his finely calibrated blend of the nightmarish and the mundane, though Bill Greenwell came closest, and Josh Ekroy nailed well his exhaustive sentence structures.

Sylvia Fairley, Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead, Sid Field, Trish Davis, Barry Baldwin and Katie Mallett deserve to be singled out for honourable mentions. The prizewinners, printed below, pocket £30 each and W.J. Webster romps home with the extra fiver.

Somewhere close at hand a single muffled bell began to toll: its sound seemed to mock the throng of people busying themselves in the dusty square below. For the first time in hours Mansell raised his eyes from the scene. He leant his forehead against the smeared window pane and let the insistent knell resonate through his head and down into the hollow of his chest. To his surprise he found himself praying for the strength to see the thing through; not to be drained into despair. The price of victory might be disillusion but defeat of the spirit would be unendurable. Silently the girl came up behind him and folded her arms round his waist; he could feel the young breasts warm against his back. ‘Je t’aime, Henri,’ she whispered.