for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award and the Diverse Books Award, and is being turned into a major BBC TV drama series. May lives in Dorset with her husband, two standard Schnauzers and way too many books. She should be working on her next book but is probably reading.
May applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, This Motherless Land, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Nikki May's website.‘Come to the pool,’ he said. ‘It’s way too nice to be stuck indoors. What do you say, Kate?’I confess I was slightly nervous about this. What if my page 69 was rubbish? What if I’d filled that page with adverbs and filler words? I opened my book apprehensively. But whoop! I love page 69. It takes readers directly to the heart of my book: belonging, twisting yourself out of shape to fit in, to be accepted.
She liked the way he said Kate. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad name. It was better than Katherine, at any rate. Funke made sense in Lagos but maybe it didn’t work here? Maybe Grandpa was right. Maybe becoming Kate was the way to fit in.
When Funke’s mother dies in a tragic accident, she’s forced to leave Lagos, move to England, and live with her maternal family in Somerset. It’s not the most welcoming of places – she finds the estate dilapidated, the weather gray, the food tasteless. And worse, her mother’s family are cold and distant. Faced with condescension and neglect, she strives to fit in, determined to be one of them. But that, according to her new family, means changing her name. Because Funke just won’t do – this is England, we have proper names here.
On page 69, Funke reluctantly decides that becoming Kate is the way to fit in. But, unfortunately, it’s not enough. Nothing ever would be.
I think the Page 69 Test is genius and from now on, I’ll make sure all my page 69’s are good pages. I can’t vouch for all the other pages though!
Coffee with a Canine: Nikki May & Fela and Lola.
--Marshal Zeringue
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