a MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Brown lives with her husband and two young children in New Jersey, where she is currently at work on her next novel.
She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Some Other Time, and reported the following:
Oh, I love page 69! This is such a tender moment in the text and, as it turns out, it really does capture the main problem, theme, and relationship at the heart of the novel. Specifically, on page 69, we’re closing out a chapter. Shortly before this, the protagonist, Ellie, and her husband of the last twenty years, Jonah, announced to their family (their college-aged daughter, Maggie, and Ellie’s parents, Bunny and Frank) that they’re getting divorced. There are a lot of emotions (and opinions) expressed, but now, on page 69, the chaos and reactions have quieted down, and the reader finds Ellie and Jonah alone at the end of the night and discussing whether or not they’re making a mistake. It's a really honest and heartbreaking moment—one that genuinely brought tears to my eyes while writing it (and still does whenever I read back over it).Visit Angela Brown's website.
I think if readers opened up to this page, they’d gain a solid understanding of the relationship at the core of the novel (as well as a few subtle nods to some of the magical realism elements that come a few chapters later). To me, this scene beautifully shows readers Ellie and Jonah’s relationship – they love and respect one another, and are both trying their best to be kind, but in the end have still decided to go their separate ways. There are also a few lines of important dialogue on this page, in which they contemplate what it’d be like if they went back in time, and whether or not (in terms of their marriage) they’d have done things differently. In a classic three-act structure, I would consider this scene to be the “Second Thoughts” moment of Act One, in which a character (Ellie) has made a big decision—one that will ultimately propel the rest of the plot forward—but now isn’t quite sure that it was the right one.
Some Other Time is a speculative work of Women’s Fiction in which the protagonist, Ellie, has a chance to briefly experience an alternate version of the present day—one in which she and Jonah were never married. As such, it’s very much a book about choices—those we made, those we didn’t, and so on. Therefore, I think that, all in all, page 69 does ultimately pass the test because, really, the whole scene is about these two main characters contemplating their choices and, by way of them, the ripple effect each of them has potentially sent out into the world.
The Page 69 Test: Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time.
Q&A with Angela Brown.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
