The Page 69 Test: "Bright and Deadly Things"

Lexie Elliott was born in 1976 and grew up in Scotland, at the foot of the Highlands. Her first attempt at a book came in primary school, and featured a horse;

sadly, that manuscript has been lost. She attended a local state high school, Dunblane High School, and spent much of her teenaged years reading and swimming. In 1994 she began a Physics degree at University College, Oxford, where she obtained a first; she subsequently obtained a doctorate in Theoretical Physics, also from Oxford University. A keen sportwoman, she represented Oxford University every one of her seven years there in either Swimming or Waterpolo, and usually both. However, she never lost her longheld desire to become a writer and always had a drawer full of private scribblings.

After university, Elliott succumbed to the need to climb out of debt and find a job and began work for an investment bank in London, where she remained for 8 years. During that time she also took up triathlon, met her husband (in a swimming pool at 5.30am, but that is another story...), got married and had two gorgeous boys, swam the English Channel solo, ran a few marathons and ultramarathons and tried in vain to carve out enough time to write. After losing her banking job during the Global Financial Crisis, she began work part-time in fund management in the City of London, and writing part-time. Her debut novel, The French Girl, was published in February 2018. This was followed by The Missing Years in 2020 and How To Kill Your Best Friend (a Richard & Judy Book Club summer pick) in 2021.

Elliott applied the Page 69 Test to her fourth novel, Bright and Deadly Things, and reported the following:

Is page 69 of Bright and Deadly Things a fair reflection of the entire novel? I’ve undertaken this exercise with two of my previous novels (The French Girl and The Missing Years) and in both cases, I was surprised to find that the answer was a resounding yes. For this book, however, I can’t say the same.

Page 69 finds our protagonist Emily, a recently-widowed Oxford fellow, on a group walk in the French Alps; she has joined a chalet party at the remote Chalet des Anglais, a rustic academic retreat. The group contains all strata of university life, from undergraduates through to senior professors, though on this page, we don’t see her anything of the broader group dynamics that are a vital theme of the book—How should a group behaved when taken out of its natural environment? Do the usual hierarchies apply? If not, what are the new rules?—as she is in conversation only with Peter, a long-time collaborator of her late husband. Grief, however, is another important theme, and we do see that on display here:
I thread my way to Peter’s side as we set off. The path is narrower here— no more than two abreast is possible— and the ground is uneven and strewn with occasional large rocks; I have to keep my eyes on my footing. “You know, Peter, I’ve never asked. Has Nick’s death left any ongoing projects in the lurch?” I’m pleased to hear that I barely stumble on death, though it’s not said without cost: on its exit from my mouth, the word trails little hooks behind it that catch and drag at my insides. “With whom was he working mainly?”
By this stage in the novel, Emily has already experienced a break in at her Oxford home and also realised that someone within the chalet party has tried to gain access to her laptop, but there is nothing of her growing unease on this particular page. Nor do we see anything of the chalet itself, whose unique atmosphere, particularly at night, appears to be having an impact on the group. We do gain a small insight into the world of academia and we also get a glimpse of Emily’s character: she is logical and thoughtful, but not passive—a natural problem-solver. Having identified Nick’s death as a potential obstacle in her relationship with Peter, she sets about devising strategies to deal with that:
“Oh.” Once again, he’s a little awkward, as if worried about upsetting me by saying the wrong thing. I will have to brazen it out, I decide. Exposure therapy. I like Peter: I like the way his mind leaps and races, the way he owns to his own flaws such that they become, as Jana put it, almost endearing. We can’t have the topic of Nick sitting as an unmentionable black hole between us; it would bleed our friendship dry. “Well, you know what Nick was like. He always had fingers in lots of different pies. You must know that— he said you proofread everything he did.” He glances at me with raised eyebrows as if it’s a question.

“Well, yes, and vice versa. God, the number of times we disagreed about punctuation . . . Nick was largely against.” My wry words pull a laugh from Peter.
Not only does this page fail to address many of the novel’s major plot elements and themes, other than grief, but it also fails to capture the ratcheting tension and growing paranoia that develops as the isolated chalet party faces danger that can only come from within. As such, Bright and Deadly Things fails the Page 69 Test—but I strongly recommend you pick up a copy and decide for yourself!