"All the Rage"

Courtney Summers is the author of young adult novels including Fall for Anything, Some Girls Are, and Cracked Up to Be. She lives and writes in Canada, where she divides her time between a piano, a camera, and a word-processing program when she’s not planning for the impending zombie apocalypse.

Summers applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, All the Rage, and reported the following:

Page 69:

I follow Todd to the New Yorker, a mess. He makes me go around the house for the hose, and we start there, giving it a rinse. We could probably stop there if we wanted—looks good enough to anyone passing by—but Todd wants to prove he can make it gleam, so we keep going, working up a sweat.

“Wake Lake this Friday, huh?” he asks after a while and now I know Wake Lake is this Friday.

“Andrew was talking about it. Figured it’d be soon.”

“You ever go?” I ask. “When it was your turn?”

“I did.” He squeezes some soapy water over the windshield. “You going?”

“Not really my scene.”

“Mine, either. I was fucked up on painkillers before I got there. The only thing I remember is watching your mom and dad make out through the bonfire.”

“That’s sad, Todd.”

“Yep. But I was no good to anyone back then.” He wipes his forehead with the back of his arm. “Paul—it was better it was him, then.”

“Better it’s you now,” I say.

Todd smiles crookedly. “Thanks, kid.”

All the Rage is an examination of the consequences of rape culture. It was a difficult book to write and I've heard it's a difficult book to read. It's about a girl names Romy, who has been sexually assaulted by the local sheriff's son. When she speaks out about it, no one believes her. Romy has few safe spaces in the wake of this, but Page 69 reflects one of them. Here, she's spending time with her mother's boyfriend, Todd, who supports and believes her.

Visit Courtney Summers's website.

The Page 69 Test: Cracked Up to Be.

The Page 69 Test: Some Girls Are.

The Page 69 Test: This Is Not a Test.

--Marshal Zeringue