Beginning ~ with a beach walk

Intrusions ~ by Ursula Hegi, 1981, fiction

Megan Stone was walking along the deserted beach.

You will probably ask, Why another book about another woman walking along another beach?  Another deserted beach, to be more specific.  And you will sigh impatiently, wondering how soon Megan is going to arrive at some monumental insight..."

Okay, I stopped that long sentence because it's all speculating on what Megan Stone might do — or not.  I don't know if Megan Stone is the protagonist (main character) of this novel or protagonist of the novel within this novel.  The back cover tells me Hegi has written about an author who interacts with her main character.  From the back cover:

Brilliantly stretching literary conventions, Ursula Hegi, author of the best-selling Stones from the River, creates a funny and original novel within a novel to explore the doubts, decisions, and 'might-have-beens' that mark not only the writing process but life itself.  As her 'author' and her fictional heroine deal with their intrusions into each other's lives, Hegi reveals much about the choices women make, the ambiguities they face, and the often surprising ways reality and fiction merge.

Last week, I ran across an email to our book club leader in which I had suggested three books.  I'd read two of them and hadn't read one, I said.  Twelve years later, I recognized the two I'd read and this as the one I still haven't read.  So I ordered it through ABE.com, and it arrived yesterday afternoon.  Knowing this unusual twist — Hegi writing about an author interacting with her book's character — I opened the book at random and read this on page 183:

I want to make a confession.

Something has been bothering me since Chapter 61.

Chapter 61?  I looked, and this was chapter 103.  Must be short chapters.  I can tell it's going to be a weird story.  You have now read as many words from the book as I have.  Do you think Megan Stone is the author inside the book?  Or the author's character?  Both, of course, would be Hegi's characters.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays. Click here for today's Mister Linky.