British national newspapers and magazines. She has been a magazine profile writer for the Sunday Telegraph and a contributor to The Guardian’s family section. She is the author of several books, including Under Your Skin, Lie With Me, and Finders, Keepers. She lives in south London with her husband, the writer Giles Smith, and their three children.
Durrant applied the Page 69 Test to her newest novel, Sun Damage, and reported the following:
On page 69 of Sun Damage the narrator, a young woman called Ali, arrives back at a hotel and is shown to a room by the man behind reception. She describes him – ‘slight and very slim, with darts on the side of his pressed shirt’ - and they take the stairs to the first floor, at the top of which she pauses. ‘Panicked again, I bent to rub my bare foot’. She apologies for having made ‘a bit of a mess’ and tells the concierge she will find paper to clear it up. He gets ahead of her along the corridor and he opens her door and lets her in. The page ends with: ‘I got past him and closed the door.’Visit Sabine Durrant's Twitter perch and Instagram page.
The page in many ways gives a good idea of the whole work. It describes an ordinary-seeming event and yet it is riven with oddities; things in this world, in the narrator’s head are heightened and askew. Ali lives on her nerves – she is constantly watching and judging, keeping one step ahead. She notices the receptionist is wearing a new shirt – it’s information she might be able to use. She pauses ‘panicked’ because he is accompanying her to a room whose location she should know but doesn’t (the corridor runs in both directions); she rubs her leg to give him time to lead the way– the room is three doors along. She counts. It’s a habit.
We learn that she is bare-foot and that her foot is bleeding; these are incidental details which she does not make a big thing of – though she is keen to let him know that she will clear it up. It is typical of the book; little drops of blood, small injuries both internal and external that need mopping. Ali is a grifter – though it’s only implicit not explicit in this scene – and she’s morally all over the place, but she has a good heart. She doesn’t want the receptionist in his new shirt to have to clear up her mess.
In Sun Damage, Ali battles to take control of events. On page 69 she is doing her best, trying to keep it all together. She closes the door in the last line on the page, and if you have read the previous 68 pages, you are aware of the emotional toll; that she is about to be alone for the first time, and that something inside may be about to break. Page 69 gives a good idea of the book as a whole, but you need the previous 68 pages to fully grasp the import of that.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
