Stephen King called her “special, even extraordinary,” and Gillian Flynn wrote, “She is simply a brilliant novelist.” Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty-five languages.
Lippman applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Murder Takes a Vacation, and shared the following:
Page 69 in Murder Takes a Vacation opens to a seminal memory for the main character, Mrs. Blossom. It's about the first time she saw the work of Joan Mitchell, an abstract expressionist, and how emotional it made her. This, she thinks to herself, "was a woman who clearly was not afraid to take up space." Mrs. Blossom is a woman who's trying not to be afraid to take up space, but it doesn't come naturally to her. Newly rich through a stroke of luck, she has flown to Paris to see a Mitchell exhibit, resolved to see Mitchell's home in Vetheuil.Visit Laura Lippman's website.
In her memory of her first time: “The paintings were bold, enormous . . . And so much color, so many evocations of flowers! Mrs. Blossom had wandered through the rooms transfixed, feeling as if this work had been created explicitly for her.”
The fact is, I discovered Mitchell as Mrs. Blossom did, at a show at the Baltimore Museum of Art. I am embarrassed I didn't know of her work until a few years ago, but so it goes. And, although I'm not as shy as Mrs. Blossom, I'm also a little conflicted about taking up space.
Because I became a mother quite late in life, I'm not yet at the point of the existential dilemma she finds herself in, with no one to care for. (A widow for a decade, she's been helping with her grandchildren, but now her daughter's family is relocating to Tokyo and she is pointedly not invited to join them.) But I've lately taken to bragging that I'm living my best old lady life -- still working, but enjoying travel and museums more and more. I'm even a docent at the American Visionary Art Museum.
A browser glancing at page 69 would certainly get a glimpse of the larger themes of the work — a woman alone, traveling, interested in art, feeling a little bit adrift, but trying to take positive steps.
The Page 69 Test: Another Thing to Fall.
The Page 69 Test: What the Dead Know.
The Page 69 Test/Page 99 Test: Life Sentences.
The Page 69 Test: I'd Know You Anywhere.
The Page 69 Test: The Most Dangerous Thing.
The Page 69 Test: Hush Hush.
The Page 69 Test: Wilde Lake.
My Book, the Movie: Wilde Lake.
The Page 69 Test: Sunburn.
The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.
The Page 69 Test: Dream Girl.
The Page 69 Test: Prom Mom.
--Marshal Zeringue
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