I had driven to Boston from New Haven to see what was to turn out to be one of the legendary sports tragedies: the Harvard-Yale football game that came to be known as The Tie. Except it wasn't really a tie: Yale led by 16 points with about two minutes to go, and we were tipsily waving the white handkerchiefs of triumphalism at the Harvard side when a shocking reversal began to unfold.
Yet the miracle that Chen conjures from this poisonously dysfunctional setup is that Jiale and Terry begin to bond, probably beginning with a shocking incident that follows an accident with the balcony washing line.
But after a week in which the Iranian currency, the rial, fell by a shocking 40 percent and protests began to rumble through the capital, no one is making light of the mounting costs of confrontation.
The film begins with a shocking confrontation and a shocking stab of violence.
Her truth begins with a shocking calculation: of the 55 million mortgages in America, more than 10 million are reasonably likely to default.
Marilynne Robinson's new novel, "Lila" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), opens in about 1920, and it begins with a shocking action: a woman steals a child.
The Potter novels dispatched major characters at a rate remarkable in children's fiction and The Casual Vacancy, though structurally a social comedy about a parish council, began with a shocking death and included several more.
The team's six-game European warm-up tour, which began with a shocking loss to Italy and ends Tuesday night with another game against Turkey, has been ragged at times, encouraging at others.
But Director Lixin Fan's film The Last Train Home begins with a shocking shot of Chinese jammed in a train like rubbish in an overstuffed garbage bin, their suitcases packed up to the ceiling -- and people on the platform screaming to be able to get on this "last ride" (which is sold out for months).
Hearing that was a shocking moment for us and the beginning of a journey.
