britty books

First Line: Even before Kathryn reached the top of the stairs, she could hear Mattie walking into the bathroom.

Last Words: “I just wanted to know if the children are all right,” she said across the sea.

First:  It wasn’t until we were halfway through France that we noticed Maretta wasn’t talking.

Last:  Ibadly wanted to climb up and join her, but I thought it would be safest to stay on the seat in case Mum changed her mind about going home and decided at the last minute to jump off at one of the stations along the way.

First:  I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.

Last:  I ran.

First:  I met Dean not long after my wife and I split up.

Last:  So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all the raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

First:  The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house, pulling lustily at the bell-rope.

Last:  The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is moss-grown, and god Mr. Hooper’s face is dust;  but awful is still the thought, that it mouldered beneath the black veil!

First:  True!-nervous-very,very dreadfully nervous I had been, and am;  but why will you say that I am mad?

Last:  “I admit the deed!-tear up the planks!-here, here!-it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

First:  I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdresed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.

Last:  A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.

First:  The primroses were over.

Last:  Hazel followed; and together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom.

First:  In one of my earliest memories, my mother and I are on the front porch of our rented Carter Avenue house watching two delivery men carry our brand-new television set up the steps.

Last:  “Thayer, I saw her!”  I yell.  “I saw!”

First:  Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theatre.

Last:  But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.