Not until page 241, the start of chapter 8, did I surrender.
You graze the start of Chapter 2, in which Trevor, a spindly farmer's son with Addison's disease, baffles his parents by insisting on going to university.
The excruciating tea party in Nick's cottage at the start of Chapter 5, where Gatsby contrives to come face to face with Daisy, is polished slapstick.
"This chapter will watch Blake drawing," she writes at the start of chapter one, "because, in his mind, this is where his life story begins".
"I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been," is the Billie Holiday caption at the start of Chapter 19.
One might overlook the galumphing description of Morningside Heights at the start of Chapter 1, but once the story begins to roll, you begrudge the detour in Chapter 2 for more neighborhood lore.
Similarly, to take another example, at the start of Chapter 10, Frank neatly summarizes the few virtues and multiple defects of "A Raw Youth" in a couple of terse pages.
I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.
For instance, at the start of chapter 6, "How to Make Love to a Cannibal," she offers the following sensible advice.
This will only appear at the start of chapter 4, when GG has joined the team and you have talked about the "The Pride of the Salvage King quest-part 3".
But of course those milestones were also the start of new chapters in an unfinished history.
