writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, McSweeney’s, and many other outlets. She lives with her family in New York City where she teaches creative writing at New York University.
Fusselman applied the Page 69 Test to The Means, her first novel, and reported the following:
Page 69 of The Means is the second page of a two-page chapter. I think of this chapter as a quiet chapter. The narrator, Shelly Means, is remembering a scene from her childhood. Her mother takes her searching for agates in a local creek. After they find some, her mother buys a rock polisher so she can polish them.Visit Amy Fusselman's website.The rock polisher lived in the laundry room in the basement, across the hall from my bedroom. It made a noise like the washing machine on steroids. I couldn’t believe how long it took to polish a rock: three solid days.After the rocks are polished, Shelly is surprised that they look smaller and silkier than before they were polished. She thought they would emerge larger and more glittery. She keeps them in a special box she has lined with a scrap of velvet. Page 69 ends with the lines, “I didn’t show them to anyone. I admired them when I was alone.”
I had never heard of the Page 69 Test before and I have to say that I am not sure my page 69 would be the best introduction to my book although it does contain some images (searching for things of value, rocks) that recur. But as I write this I realize that maybe I am thinking that page 69 should function like a movie trailer, that it should have all the funniest jokes in it, and the most dramatic moments, and perhaps that’s not the right idea. A browser might just want to know what the writer’s voice sounds like. That’s usually what I want to know when I open a random book.
In that case, my page 69 works pretty well. It may be a quiet page, but it does have the voice in it.
My Book, The Movie: The Means.
--Marshal Zeringue
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