every dog she meets, teaching writing, and listening to true crime podcasts while lounging on the sofa in sweats and spouting random historical facts she finds interesting.
MacIntosh applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Champagne Letters, and reported the following:
How was I to compete with the sugary fiction the wench was dishing out?Visit Kate MacIntosh's website.
My first reaction to the Page 69 Test was that the scene would give a reader a sense of character and tone to the book. While the character has had a minor setback, you can sense that she isn’t going to simply roll over and accept it.
The scene on page 69 takes place in the early 1800s with Barbe-Nicole Clicquot talking with her young daughter Clementine. Clementine is falling under the spell of a housemaid that Barbe-Nicole knows is up to no good. The Widow realizes that stories from others, especially those spun to be alluring, can be a trap. Then I realized the line above touches on a major theme in the book and as a result the scene passes the test more than I initially thought.
I’m fascinated by the power of narrative. It’s often not what happens to us, but the meaning we put on those events. We need to recognize the stories we tell ourselves and the power of those tales to shape our lives. The protagonist in the present-day story line, Natalie, is reeling from her divorce. Her husband of twenty-five years has left her for another (younger) woman and left her feeling abandoned and without direction. Her whole life she put him first and now she doesn’t even know what she wants. Reading the letters of the Widow Clicquot, she learns to tell herself a different story. That perhaps the story is that her husband leaving is a reflection on him, not her. And she can create an even better life for herself, even if she doesn’t fully know what she wants that to look like. Natalie’s discovering that she doesn’t need to believe other people’s stories, or wait to be rescued, and she’s in control of her own destiny.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
