"Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago."
It's my favorite opening in fiction, the first two lines of Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" (1956), which I return to each December the way someone else might revisit O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" or Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." I introduced this 27-page story to my daughter when she was only five, reading aloud from the 1996 Modern Library edition, a slim blue volume that also includes "The Thanksgiving Visitor" (1968) and "One Christmas" (1982). This collection was out of print for a while, but it has been reissued. Read More
It's my favorite opening in fiction, the first two lines of Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" (1956), which I return to each December the way someone else might revisit O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" or Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." I introduced this 27-page story to my daughter when she was only five, reading aloud from the 1996 Modern Library edition, a slim blue volume that also includes "The Thanksgiving Visitor" (1968) and "One Christmas" (1982). This collection was out of print for a while, but it has been reissued. Read More