include Only the Beautiful and The Nature of Fragile Things (starred reviews, Publishers Weekly), The Last Year of the War (a Library Reads and Real Simple top pick), and As Bright as Heaven (starred review, Library Journal.) She attended Point Loma Nazarene University and lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their yellow Lab, Winston.
Meissner applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Only the Beautiful, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Susan Meissner's website.The doctor turns to one of the boxes next to him and lifts off the lid, revealing a portable gramophone with a shiny silver crank that he obviously turned in preparation for my session. Dr. Townsend sets the turntable spinning and lowers the arm with its needle onto the record already placed there. Music from Tommy Dorsey begins to fill the room. It is a bright, happy tune. I instinctively put my hands over my ears as ribbons of sky blue begin to fall all around the insides of my mind.Only the Beautiful is the story of two women in the late 1930s—a pregnant teenager with a sensory anomaly working on a vineyard in California and an American ex-pat working as a nanny to a disabled child in Nazi-occupied Vienna—who are both impacted by the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. This movement, highly popular in the US in the early twentieth century, was a scheme to control the collective gene pool; meaning “beautiful” people were highly encouraged to have children and those seen as inferior were not only discouraged from having them but in many cases were prevented from having them.
“Put your hands down, Rosie,” the doctor says, plenty loud enough for me to hear.
I slowly obey, lowering my arms as the music continues to play and the colors swirl like flags in a breeze.
“I’d like to know what you are seeing,” Dr. Townsend said.
I swallow hard. “I don’t see anything.” I tighten my grip on the armrests of my chair and hold his gaze—and my breath—willing the colors to fade.
The doctor stops the turntable and switches recordings. The next beautiful array of sounds I recognize from Celine’s set of Christmas albums. “The Waltz of the Flowers” from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite fills the space around me, and instantly magnificent puffs of yellow and pink and scarlet began to burst like fireworks in the folds of my mind.
“Tell me what you see, Rosie,” Dr. Townsend says.
“Nothing!” I shout. “I don’t see anything.”
He leans toward me as the recording continues, the music becoming more enchanting with every measure. “I could attach electrodes to your head and monitor your brain waves and I could prove that I know you’re lying,” he says, gently and yet forcefully. “You’re seeing the colors right now. I want to know what you see.”
“Stop, please stop,” I beg.
“Tell me what you see.”
The Page 69 Test reveals much about prejudice, a theme which is all over the pages of this book, and about how insanely cruel it is to assume you are better than someone else just because you decide you are. In this scene, a doctor in a state hospital known for sterilizing people without their knowledge or consent is having a “therapy session” with the main character, Rosie, who was born with synesthesia—a rare, condition where two or more senses can be tangled. In Rosie’s case, the senses of hearing and vision are woven together in her mind: when she hears a sound, she sees colors. Sadly, in 1939 little was widely understood about the condition and anything divergent that wasn’t understood was often seen by eugenic thinkers as a debilitating flaw. For Rosie, this ability which has brought such beauty to her life will put a target on her back. She will have to be bolder and braver than she’s ever been before to protect herself and her unborn child from forces that see her as imperfect, defective, un-beautiful…
Coffee with a Canine: Susan Meissner & Bella.
The Page 69 Test: A Bridge Across the Ocean.
The Page 69 Test: The Last Year of the War.
--Marshal Zeringue
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