The Bulwer-Lytton prize for the worst opening sentence of a novel has been given annually since 1982 by San Jose State University.  This year’s recipient is Molly Ringle, according to The Guardian‘s website.

The first line of her novel The Ghost Downstairs reads:

“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

The prize is named after the first line of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford, published in1830. It started “It was a dark and stormy night…”  Though it may have seemed vaguely fresh at the time, it has become the standard for quintessentially cliched story openings.

Recipient Ringle took it with good humor and stands by her gerbil metaphor, which was inspired by her nursing child: “There are definitely worse ways to get 15 minutes of fame,” she commented. Nevertheless, authors who seek immortality may want to skirt this particular honor.

It’s all here, including a doozy of a runner-up: Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing goes to ‘inappropriate’ gerbil sentence

Richard Curtis