Rewrite the openings to famous novels in the style of John Lanchester

More leaden please

Ok but the banality and bathos were there I feel

Will work on this

Last night, as I lay asleep in my bed in my bedroom, I had a dream which involved me returning to Manderley, an estate at which I had earlier in my life spent some time.

Sorry, I mean

Last night at 3.47am, as I lay asleep in my bed in my bedroom, I had a dream which involved me returning to Manderley, an estate at which I had earlier in my life spent some time.

Another good one. I am not actually familiar with this guy's work either, I guess I should look around

At 7.00pm in the morning in a Martello tower in the Sandycove area of Dublin medical student Malachi "Buck" Mulligan, a heavyset and dignified man, called downstairs to wake his friend Stephen Dedalus and began to shave.

am gawd

It was a bleak December 13th, at exactly 12:00 midnight, when, deep in grief and reading a well-thumbed vintage volume (part of a five-book set), I was interrupted by a mysterious rapping at my chamber door.

Some time ago, a cow walked along a road, and encountered a young boy called Baby Tuckoo.

At 11.30pm on a damp Friday night, Geoff Godot was running late, three days late to be precise.

It was just after dinner-time on Wednesday evening, and Mr Edward Rochester was sitting with Jane, the governess who had answered an ad he put in the Thornfield Argus, and wondering how on earth to tell her about the mad woman in his attic.

It was the middle of the nineteenth century, and a veteran sailor called Ishmael was about to tell a story about a disastrous whaling voyage he'd been on.

"I once had a plan to write a radio play imagining Nabokov getting stuck in a lift at the Palace with the heavy rock band Deep Purple."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n09/john-lanchester/nabokovs-dreams

rereading the ilx lanchester threads for a thing (lol) i have concluded that JL also reads them: Rewrite the openings to famous novels in the style of John Lanchester

(and for those who never click links in the thread to the thread they're in):

"It was a quarter to midnight upon the evening of the 17th of April 1846 when, waking in the middle of a frightening thunderstorm and seeking solace in the arms of my surrogate parents, my mouth, hitherto silent, came to conflate what little comprehension my brain had of my deceased father's name, Pirrip, and my similar Christian name, Philip, resulting in my first utterance of the name, Pip, by which I came to be known."

― avant-garde, sissy bounce, zombie rave, aquacrunk, warlock, oceangrunge, (imago), Wednesday, 25 November 2015 11:35 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I read Mr Phillips and thought it was a deliberate stylistic choice to reflect the inner voice of the pedantic and slightly pathetic lead character. Had no idea Lanchester always wrote like that.

"I am someone to whom - and on whom - illness has visited. I also, and this is worth remarking upon, for it serves to illuminate a facet of my psychology and therefore should not be mislaid or otherwise glanced over - I hold in reserve a measure of ill-feeling, like a mouthful of calvados knocking contemptuously around the bottom corner of a medium-sized Thermos."