starting a novel with dialog

[mccardey]

The example you provided is, unfortunately, monologue, not dialog so it isn't really germane. Nevertheless, it's easy to appreciate that the monologue is conveying a lot of information. It's also raising a lot of questions, though, and I'm not sure that's such a good thing at the start of a novel. If you can come up with a novel beginning with dialog I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Monologue and duologue are generally terms for performance aren't they? I'd class the Gilead excerpt a reported dialogue - there are two speakers in the remembered conversation.

As to raising questions right at the beginning - surely that comes down to taste in reading. You don't like questions raised at the start, which is fine - but I love it. Which means that your

I think this is an awful way of starting a novel or any other piece of fiction. Starting with dialog is confronting the reader with characters who haven't been introduced and challenging them imagine a context. Why would anyone want to do this?

has a really simple answer. 'Some readers love it.' (And also some writers love to do it, and do it well.)

I'll have a think about a novel that starts in a more rigidly defined form of dialogue and let you know if anything comes up. But I do think that one of the ways it's successfully done is by slightly altering the convention of dialogue. To make it reported or remembered for instance - as above.