Joyce Williamson, reflecting upon the events following her father’s death, had become withdrawn, suppressing a sort of vague rage. A cold, furious incomprehension at such a calamity. She threw herself into an orgy of frantic, almost hysterical activity. Dismissing her sister’s entreaties, she stripped her father’s room of everything which connected it to him: his clothes, his books, his toiletries, his pictures, his bric-a-brac. When she had finished, she locked the room. She then turned her attention to the rest of the house: polishing, cleaning, clearing cupboards and shelves, shampooing carpets, re-arranging furniture, changing curtains. By this aberrant behaviour, it seemed she was determined to so expunge the familiar that she could not be reminded of the past. She restored all the packages finally into the now gleaming kitchen cabinets and closed the doors upon her labours. She climbed down from the kick stool and, crossing to the sink, filled the kettle and flicked the switch. She sat at the table, gazing out, motionless, drained by her efforts. Suddenly she began to cry like a small child. ‘Oh, Daddy, why did you do this to us? Why, Daddy, why?’
Labels: dilemma, editing, hooking the reader in, opening lines to a novel, Pegasus Falling, The Cypress Branches, William E. Thomas