“The only advice I can offer, should you wake up vertiginously in a strange flat, with a thoroughly installed hangover, without any of your clothing, without any recollection of how you got there, with the police sledgehammering down the door to the accompaniment of excited dogs, while you are surrounded by bales of lavishly-produced magazines featuring children in adult acts, the only advice I can offer is to try to be good-humoured and polite.”
–From Tibor Fischer’s The Thought Gang
Opening sentences serve as entryways into novels, and even though I have no idea what “vertiginously” means and it’s questionable regarding whether or not I cracked open a dictionary when I was first exposed to this sentence, I do not think I would have read this book if it wasn’t for its existence.
Bradley Sands is the author of It Came from Below the Belt and My Heart Said No, but the Camera Crew Said Yes!
That sentence is hilarious.
I like the phrase “thoroughly installed” for a hangover, too, as if relief might just mean a phone call to the right demolition team. Plus it’s hilariously polite, foregrounding the sentence’s endpoint.