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Small Slices - Capsule Novel Reviews
These reviews offer an overview of how the openings of these novels were written to engage an audience. They are not meant to convey a review of a full book, just a taste of one small slice of each book.
All reviews by Bill Johnson, copyright 2001-2026.
Notes on The Hunger Games
In the beginning...
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
The novel starts rooted in the POV of Katniss, a young girl. The opening conveys subtle information about the world, waking up cold, a mattress with a canvas cover, the question, what is the reaping? It also raises character questions, who is Prim? Why is she having bad dreams? What do her dreams have to do with the reaping?
Next...
I prop myself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.
This conveys a stronger sense of place, but more questions. Why does the mother appear 'beaten-down'? What happened to the once beautiful mother? Who is this 'they' who commented on the mother's former beauty?
Continuing...
Sitting at Prim's knees, guarding her, is the ugliest cat in the world. Mashed in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash.
This conveys a description of a cat, but also a subtext about this world, that pets fend for themselves in a harsh world. There's also the subtext here that the narrator does not like this cat.
Continuing...
Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least he distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I think he still remembers how I tried to drown him in a bucket when Prim brought him home.
Again, another question: why did the narrator feel compelled to kill the cat? With the title, Hunger Games, the reason is implied; one more mouth to feed.
Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed.
That confirms the why the narrator wanted the kitten dead, but raises another question: why is she responsible for feeding her mother and sister?
But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he's a born mouser. Even catches an occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.
This conveys the narrator's desire to make her little sister happy. That a pet is fed entrails and not cat food again suggests something about this familiar yet alien world.
Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.
There's a subtext here that in this harsh world, accommodations are made, but only grudgingly.
This is the first page of the book. It continues with the narrator getting up and ready to go out hunting, and relates that she lives in District 12 that is crawling with coal miners. Again, questions are raised that will soon be answered, and the answers will raise new questions.
The author next relates that District 12 is surrounded by an electrified fence to protect the inhabitants from wild dogs and other wild animals. District 12 is sounding more like a gulag, which it comes out that it is for most of its inhabitants, but the narrator is willing to go beyond that fence.
Suzanne Collins demonstrates a deft touch in introducing this narrator in a harsh world, but also showing her initiative to not be fenced in. Novels that lack this clearly defined, carefully crafted character and plot and scene development from their opening lines risk being static and dramatically inert.
Notes on Page 1 of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones
My goal here will be to break down the 13 pages of the prologue, one page at a time.
In the beginning...
Game of Thrones opens with a map of this world, which is a quick way to orient readers to a new and different world.
Then...
Prologue
And...
"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildings are dead."
The unusual name, Gared, is a quick way to suggest this is not contemporary world. The image of the woods growing dark also works as a metaphor to suggest darkness is coming upon this world. Details of a time and place ring true when they convey a subtext.
The line 'The wildings are dead' convey both mystery and questions. What are wildings? How did they die? Why does Gared feel this urgency to turn back?
"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.
The mocking smile here suggests that Royce is in command of Gared, and also that Royce is arrogant.
Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen lordlings come and go. “Dead is dead,” he said. “We have no business with the dead.”
That a man is old at fifty suggests the violence of this world. This passage also conveys something about the relationship of Gared to Royce (soldier loyal to a royal lineage), and that Gared is a no nonsense man. Martin has moved from a mysterious opening to specific details about the characters that provide one answer, what is Gared to Royce, but also raises more questions, what is this royal family Gared has been in service to? Are they part of this Game of Thrones?
This question, answer, question process demonstrates Martin's ability to both raise questions to draw readers in, and to provide answers that raise more questions that continue that process of engaging, holding, and rewarding the attention of an audience. At some workshops, I'll have new authors read from the first page of a manuscript one sentence at a time to show the lack of questions.
Continuing...
"Are they dead?" Royce asked softly. "What proof have we?"
This acts out that Royce is more thoughtful than Gared, and also suggests that Gared and Royce probably have differing goals.
Continuing...
"Will saw them," Gared said. "If he says they are dead, that's proof enough for me."
Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. “My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,” he put in.
This brings in the third character in the scene at a dramatic moment, and someplace he'd rather not be, in the middle of this argument.
"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will,” Royce replied. “Never believe anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead.” His voice echoed, too loud in the twilight forest.
A wet nurse is someone brought in to suckle the young of nobility, again conveying Royce's status. The line about learning from the dead also suggests the difference between Royce and Gared, a thoughtful young leader and a hardened warrior.
The note about his voice being too loud again conveys the menace of the situation. What or whom could be listening?
"We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "Eight days, maybe nine. And night is falling."
What Gared conveys here is that he is willing to argue a point, even with a superior. This also raises the question, what is the destination of their journey?
Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. “It does that every day about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?”
Royce openly taunts Gared now. The argument is escalating and raises a question: what will be the outcome of this taunt? How will Gared respond? Can he, if Royce is his lordling?
I'm ending the review here and will continue with the next page.
One feels reading this opening page that it is a step into and deeper into this world. Often when I read manuscripts and ask inexperienced writers why they are making banal choices, I often hear a word I dread. They are 'introducing' their characters. George R. R. Martin is doing something altogether different here. He has set his story into motion with these three men who are being swallowed by an ominous darkness.
One page, one step into this mysterious world.
Novels that lack that clearly defined, carefully crafted forward movement from their opening lines are often static and dramatically inert, no matter how nicely detailed the people and places. That's why most agents don't need to read more than a first paragraph to realize they aren't reading the next George R. R. Martin.
Writing Lean and Mean, Notes on Lee Child's Jack Reacher, The Midnight Line
by Bill Johnson
This novel is a wonderful example of the power in a purity of intent. Jack Reacher is a West Point graduate and a retired military MP who had a reputation for breaking the rules to get to justice.
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After leaving the military, Jack has taken up a solitary life, going from place to place until something engages his interest. In this novel, it is a pawned West Point graduation ring. He's determined to find out what happened to the owner and whether the ring was stolen or pawned. If pawned, why would the owner do that?
Jack is a large man, physically imposing, and capable of handling himself in dangerous situations. But there is a suggestion that Jack is, on some level, a wounded warrior. A trucker who picks up Jack mentions that his wife would say that Jack lives a nomadic life because of a deep wound, and Jack considers that point later in the novel. It raises a question about Jack that this novel doesn't answer, but it adds a dimension to Jack.
Jack is a force of nature, not to be denied no matter the odds.
Characters in the novel are organized around how they deal with authority. Jack is a rule breaker. He allies himself with a P.I., Terry Bramall, a retired F.B.I. agent, who can bend some rules but feels others cannot be broken. Gloria Naknamura, a detective in Rapid City, is much more bound by rules and must maneuver to get her boss to approve her surveillance of a local all-around bad guy drug dealer who operates out of a laundromat.
Much of the dramatic dialogue in the novels revolves around Jack asking others to follow his lead, even if it means breaking rules, and how others respond, like Gloria maneuvering her boss to do what she thinks is right. Others think they can ignore Jack's requests for information and the dialogue in those scenes is tightly written and generally ends with Jack dealing out punishing mayhem.
This organization means readers can assign meaning to the actions of the characters, even if the story is written in a way that doesn't call attention to its structure.
As the story progresses, Jack learns that the retired military officer he seeks is a woman with a face destroyed by an IAD explosion in Afghanistan. She has hidden away in a cabin in the Wyoming wilderness where she treats her facial wounds and organizes her life around buying a large amount of opioids from the local drug distribution network to deal with her chronic pain.
The laser focus on finding the owner of the ring means readers can track and assign meaning to the action and how Jack deals with those who refuse to answer his simple questions.
When the officer is found, a more powerful question revolves around whether she can return to some kind of life in the world and still have a supply of opioids to deal with her pain. This gives the novel a look at the contemporary world of law enforcement and how wounded warriors and ordinary people deal with chronic pain and addiction.
The Midnight Line is a wonderful example of how a novel that advances through action can have a subtle, thoughtful organization.
Writing a Novel With a Message
Notes on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Some novels are written to convey a direct message to a reader. One such novel is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
In this novel, it is the job of fireman not to put out fires, but to burn books. Writing about a society that would destroy books is a commentary on life in the 20th century.
The novel opens with a sentence that meets the prime directive of a first sentence: give your reader a reason to read a second sentence.
"It was a pleasure to burn."
The immediate questions, what is a pleasure to burn; and what is 'it.'
To get answers, we must continue reading.
"It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed."
This raises the question, what is being 'eaten' and 'changed' to create this special pleasure. Who will experience this pleasure?
"With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history."
This sentence introduces the main character and how he feels as he holds this 'great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world.' This is someone who loves his work. It also raises questions, what is this 'charcoal ruins of history? What is being burned and destroyed?
"With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flames with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black."
We know now that he is burning a house, but why? For all the intensity of the moment, he's described as having a 'stolid head.' We're learning more about the character and more about the situation, but both are still mysterious to a reader. Why is a fireman burning this house? What is the meaning of 451?
"He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmellow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house."
We now have the shocking revelation of what he is burning, books.
"While the books went up in sparking whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning."
This is the end of a first paragraph. Our fireman thinks of roasting marshmellows while burning books. This conveys who he is and a potential arc, what could change this man?
Second paragraph...
"Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame."
Now the author gives this character a name, after first conveying who this man is.
"He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. "
Here is a man who enjoys his job.
"Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered."
The author is making the point how rooted this character is in his unexamined personality.
Double line space in the novel.
"He hung up his black beetle-colored helmet and shined it; he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showed luxuriously, and then, whistling, hands in his pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole."
The subtext of 'black beetle-colored helmet' conveys how the character is insect-like.
"At the last moment, when disaster seemed positive, he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his fall by grasping the golden pole. He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor."
This man's life runs on habit and routine.
"He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb."
This conveys the novel is set in the future.
"Whistling, he let the escalator waft him into the still night air. He walked toward the corner, thinking little at all about nothing in particular. Before he reached the corner, however, he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere, as if someone had called his name."
This is a turning point, that something is happening in the life of this unconscious character.
"The last few nights he had had the most uncertain feelings about the sidewalk just around the corner here, moving in the starlight toward his house. He had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through."
The author wants reader to recognize this moment.
A few moments later...
"The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward."
The description of the girl is ethereal, poetic.
Moments later...
"Her dress was white and it whispered." She "....stood regarding Montag with eyes so dark and shining and alive, that he felt that he had said something wonderful."
Again, evocative, poetic language. Montag the beetle is having feelings new to him.
Moments later...
She tells Montag she is 'seventeen and crazy.' And she lets him know that, unlike his neighbors, she is not afraid of him. This information is a revelation to him.
And then she asks, "Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
The set up for this novel and Montag's role is in place. Will he wake up from his insect-like existence?
As she continues to speak about a life and world alien to Montag, he responds, "You think too many things," said Montag, uneasily.
Back in his home, he won't let himself think about what is hidden behind a grill, and he reflects about a clock, that it was "...moving also toward a new sun" Just as his life appears to be moving forward into a new world.
In his bedroom, Montag reflects, "He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask..."
Montag realizes his wife has taken pills to commit suicide. He makes a report and two technicians clean out her system and leave to handle the other nine calls they've received about suicides.
This conveys much about this world.
It comes out that his house has a TV that fills three walls and his wife desires a fourth wall so she can feel fully immersed in the world of TV. TVs had only been around for a year when Bradbury wrote this novel, but the novel is prescient about how people would want to use this technology to enter a cocoon.
Montag comes across Claire, who is on her way to see a psychiatrist for being anti-social.
And then Claire is gone, and Montag goes to a house to burn books, but the owner of the books, an elderly woman, refuses to leave. She not only refuses, she lights a match to set her house and books on fire, killing herself.
At home, Montag reveals to his wife what he has been hiding, books. Books that speak about a world that Montag no longer remembers.
The fireman is now at risk of being burned.
Fahrenheit 451 is a wonder example of a novel with a prescient message about what can happen when life is replaced by an artificial reality. Bradbury understood the message he wanted to convey.
Bradbury brings this world to life with a clear, evocative, poetic vision that is always in the service of the story he is telling. Bradbury is rightly revered as a storyteller.
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
I had a powerful reaction to this book. I couldn't conceive how Grass wrote this story. Now, I can talk about some of the elements of his opening, but I know I'm only touching on what Grass created with this amazing novel. I read a translation, but from the reaction to the book in Germany, I assume the translation captured the spirit of what Grass created.
First sentence, Book One, 'The Wide Skirt.'
'Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.'
This open raises immediate questions: why is the narrator in a mental institution? Why is he so closely watched? That the narrator is a 'blue-eyed' type becomes significant later.
Next sentence, next paragraph...
'So you see, my keeper can't be an enemy. I've come to be very fond of him; when he stops looking at me from behind the door and comes into the room, I tell him incidents from my life, so he can get to know me in spite of the peephole between us. '
This promises the audience to learn more about the narrator during these talks. It also suggests the narrator has interesting stories to tell, and an engaging personality. There's also a suggestion here of the American occupation of Germany after the war.
Next...
'He seems to treasure my stories, because every time I tell him some fairy tale, he shows his gratitude by bringing out his latest knot construction.'
That the narrator is a teller of 'tales' puts the audience in the situation of having to decide how much of what he says is true. This kind of technique can compel an audience to pay attention (as long as the story commands attention). There's also a sub text here (although it won't be apparent for some time) of some of the 'knotty' issues Grass explores in this story.
Next sentences...
'I wouldn't swear that he's an artist. But I am certain that an exhibition of his creations would be well received by the press and attract a few purchasers. He picks up common pieces of string in the patient's rooms after visiting hours, disentangles them, and works them up into elaborate contorted spooks; then he dips them in plaster, lets them harden, and mounts them on knitting needles that he fastens to little wooden pedestals. '
I found a suggestion here of the storytelling process. That the storyteller collects pieces of ideas, dialogue, characters from life, disentangles the various strings and collects them into fixed structures.
'It's also possible I'm reading too much into this, but I suspect that Grass means more than appears on the surface here. '
Next paragraph...'He often plays with the idea of colouring his works. I advise him against it, taking my white enamel bed as an example and bidding him to try and imagine how this most perfect of all beds would look if painted in many colours. He raises his hands in horror, tries to give his rather expressionless face an expression of extreme disgust, and abandons his poly chrome projects.'
For me the sub text here is a discussion about the nature of art. Does the artist accept the beauty of reality, or try to create a new reality with his or her own colours? That the narrator suggests his captor not use artificial colours is deceptive, since the narrator has already mentioned he's not against 'colouring' his stories with the details of his choice.
Next paragraph, sentences...
'So you see, my white-enameled, metal hospital bed has become a norm and standard. To me it is more still: my bed is a goal attained at last, it is my consolation and might become my faith if the management allowed me to make a few changes: I should like, for instance, to have the bars built up higher, to prevent anyone from coming too close to me.'
Much to ponder here. How does a white enamel hospital bed in a mental institution become a 'norm.' This foreshadows the exploration in this story of how other strange ideas can become 'norms.' There's also the compelling question here of why the narrator doesn't want people allowed close to him.
Next paragraph, next sentences.
'Once a week a visiting day breaks in on the stillness that I plait between the white metal bars. This is the time for the people who want to save me, whom it amuses to love me, who try to esteem and respect themselves, to get to know themselves, through me. How blind, how nervous and ill-bred they are! They scratch the white enamel of my bedstead with their fingernail scissors, they scribble obscene little men on it with their ballpoint pens and blue pencils. No sooner has my lawyer blasted into the room with his hello that he slaps his nylon hat down over the lower left-hand bedpost - an act of violence that shatters my peace of mind for the duration of his visit, and lawyers find a good deal to talk about. '
Grass blasts into his plot here, with the question, why does the narrator need a lawyer? The mental institution suggested mental problems, the lawyer, legal problems. There's a great presentation of the impact of the lawyer's arrival on the narrator. The suggestion that all is not what it seems in this story was just driven home in great force. Grass continues to provide these powerful, jolting revelations as the novel continues. Powerful story, powerful storytelling. Grass is an artist at the height of his powers here.
