She applied the Page 69 Test to The Year of the Gadfly and reported the following:Page 69 of The Year of the Gadfly, is a terrific microcosm of the novel. It encapsulates the themes of secrecy and moral ambiguity that pervade the book and hints at the whirling, action-oriented plot. The page is written from the first-person perspective of Iris Dupont, a 14-year-old aspiring journalist, whose only friend is the ghost of Edward R. Murrow. In this particular moment, Iris is reeling from recent events at her high power prep school, including a flash mob, in which a cafeteria-full of students gang up on one of their peers and a science class exercise based on the shock experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgrim. Iris is in the process of investigating a new science teacher, whom she suspects was behind the flash mob (and who made the students participate in the Milgrim-like exercise). She is about to learn that he has been lying about his past--that his motives for withholding information are extremely complicated--and that his true secret is much worse than she ever could have expected.Learn more about the book and author at Jennifer Miller's website.
--Marshal Zeringue
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