September 3, 2026 — 4:00pm
Thanks to Netflix, yet another Pride and Prejudice adaptation is coming our way. Bonnets and Bennets will again infect the zeitgeist, not that we had a real break. We live in a wretched state of perma-Austen. Breaks are hallucinations – and always short-lived.
But news of the upcoming series has got me thinking about Jane Austen’s famous opening sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
I cringe whenever it’s quoted or parodied. To be fair, this is more about my distaste for the Jane Austen Industrial Complex than for the sentence itself. It’s fine, I guess. But – in the spirit of sweeping statements – it is a fact that many Australian novelists have written better openers than Austen. I’m here to prove it.
“Unemployed at last!” from Such is Life by Joseph Furphy is short, snappy, roguish and an undeniable banger. But I might be biased towards unnerving exclamations because I also love Brian Castro’s opener to Chinese Postman, “How time-honoured custom reverts to ruin!” and Luke Davies’ opener to Candy, “Everything’s f---ing beautiful!” In each case, the reader is plunged straight into a highly questionable perspective. That’s the kind of thing I love in fiction.
