"Good Riddance"

Elinor Lipman is the award-winning author of many novels, including The View from Penthouse B and The Inn at Lake Devine; one essay collection, I Can't Complain; and Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus. She lives in New York City.

Lipman applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Good Riddance, and reported the following:

Yikes! Did my subconscious know that I’d be asked to shine a light on page 69 of Good Riddance, so I’d better make it a chapter ending that packed a wallop?

The page is just 16 lines long. My narrator has been coerced into going to a 50th high school reunion, not her own class, but one that her teacher-mother had been overly fond. of. There she meets the now-68-yeaer old valedictorian, who confesses something she’d rather not know.

Every sentence on the page is a reveal, but I can quote one without giving away the store: “I owed Peter Armstrong nothing. I was shaken and deeply sorry I’d heard the possible weighty truth.” All the other lines give too much away, but please know that weighty truths and the embroidery around them can still make for a happy ending.

Visit Elinor Lipman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue