What is in your chest?
An invisible burden?
One of my favorite parts of the Page One Podcast is asking guest authors what they are currently reading and why. It doesn’t have to be award-winning or a bestseller or something they finished or even love, but it has to have hooked them from page one.
What really worked to pull them into the pages?
Something hookey, but not hokey.
Something with deft craftsmanship.
Today’s pic is an exception. It’s not only an award winner, it deservingly swept up some the most coveted titles in the publishing world: National Book Award Finalist, long-listed for the Booker Prize, Best Book of the Year from The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Time, NPR, and Bookpage, winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and long-listed for The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellent in Fiction. These accolades are well earned.
My guest author, Lissa Soep, introduced Hisham Matar’s My Friends to me on Ep. 46 of the Page One Podcast. She loved it, as did so many others. Matar is a master.
Let’s learn from Hisham Matar and his gorgeous page one as read by Lissa Soep.
“IT IS, OF COURSE, impossible to be certain of what is contained in anyone's chest, least of all one's own or those we know well, perhaps especially those we know best, but, as I stand here on the upper level of Kings Cross Station, from where I can monitor my old friend Hosam Zowa walking across the concourse, I feel I am seeing right into him, perceiving him more accurately than ever before, as though all along, during the two decades that we have known one another, our friendship has been a study and now, ironically, just after we have bid one another farewell, his portrait is finally coming into view. And perhaps this is the natural way of things, that when a friendship comes to an inexplicable end or wanes or simply dissolves into nothing, the change we experience at that moment seems inevitable, a destiny that was all along approaching, like someone walking toward us from a great distance, recognizable only when it is too late to turn away. No one has ever been a nearer neighbor to my heart. I am convinced, as I watch him go to his train for Paris, that city where the two of us first met so long ago and in the most unlikely way, that he is carrying, right where the rib cages meet, an invisible burden, one, I believe, I can discern from this distance.”
Page one from My Friends by Hisham Matar
Wow. Just wow. Exquisite, right?
I had to take a breath because if you notice, Matar’s long introductory sentence parallels the distance of a relationship. He sweeps us into a span of time and then hints at an intimate reveal of what other people can’t see: what we hold in our hearts.
“IT IS, OF COURSE, impossible to be certain of what is contained in anyone's chest, least of all one's own or those we know well, perhaps especially those we know best…”
This hit me in many ways. Six months ago, I ended an engagement and called off a wedding. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life. I can relate to the destined ending that I saw so many months prior but did not have the courage yet to face.
And yet, as I write this, I can still smile. I can laugh in the midst of my grief. But nobody, unless they know me well, or at all, can see the invisible limp in my heart.
Grieving a relationship that has ended is a whole journey. I’m smack dab in the middle of mine. Writing seems to metabolize my pain and help me build my new life.
I’m curious how Matar’s characters will reconcile their loss, too.
Matar’s narrator seems to see everything at once after 20 years, …”when a friendship comes to an inexplicable end or wanes or simply dissolves into nothing, the change we experience at that moment seems inevitable, a destiny that was all along approaching, like someone walking toward us from a great distance, recognizable only when it is too late to turn away.”
Matar is doing a lot here in the first 235 words of My Friends.
Emotional Tone
Matar expertly sets up both an emotional tone and an intellectual engagement that pulls us in. The tone is reflective, intimate, infused with nostalgia and regret. We feel a quiet sadness or longing for connection that has either been lost or is slipping away.
We are left wondering how did this relationship end?
What sustained it in the first place?
How will the narrator’s life be affected now that the relationship is over?
Good questions.
You want your first page to raise questions, too.
Because a question marked turned upside down is a hook.
Psychological Depth
Matar’s narrator speaks to the uncertainty of ever fully understanding someone, even a close friend, and the irony that clarity comes only after a relationship has ended.
This adds a layer of tragic insight—like hindsight that only arrives too late.
The narrator is processing his feelings about the ending of the friendship, exploring both the inevitability of change and the mystery of the people we think we know.
I can relate. Can you?
The Hook
The hook in this first page comes from the intriguing paradox the narrator presents: that it is easier to understand someone once the relationship is over, and that true insight into the nature of the friendship comes only after the farewell.
Additionally, the mention of Paris, a place where the narrator and Hosam met, immediately evokes a sense of history and shared experience.
You think, will we go there? To Paris? Is Matar going to take us back?
… “I am convinced, as I watch him go to his train for Paris, that city where the two of us first met so long ago and in the most unlikely way…”
I want to know more.
What happened in Paris?
The Hook
The first page does a fantastic job of emotionally engaging the reader and intellectually teasing out the themes of the novel.
We are presented with both the ambiguity and bittersweet clarity that comes with the end of a close relationship, creating a tension that compels us to explore further.
The themes of regret, paired with the exploration of connection and perception, sets the stage for a deeper journey into the complexities of friendship and passing of time.
I love what Lissa Soep says about My Friends and why it resonated with her.
What would you say you hold in your heart (that nobody can see)?
What series of events delivered it there?
And how might that catalyze a first page for you?
Were YOU hooked? I’m curious to know!
About Me
I’ve been a private writing coach since 2005 and have taught in the MFA writing programs at the Academy of Art University, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State and Stanford Online Writers Studio. Please visit my website for all my books: hollylynnpayne.com including my recent work of historical fiction, Rose Girl, a medieval, mystical thriller about an orphaned girl who turns darkness into light.
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Latest work
ROSE GIRL: A TALE OF RESILIENCE & RUMI
Winner of a Kirkus starred Review
“Disarmingly powerful—a nuance story of female resilience that reaches across the ages.”
Editor’s Choice for The Historic Novel Society
“Riveting, gorgeous, engrossing! I raced to the end.”
Alka Joshi, NYT bestselling author of The Henna Artist
“A world of magic, mystery, poetry and above all, genuine love.”
Lee Kravetz, bestselling author of The Last Confessions of Sylvia P.