and No Ordinary Thursday. A recovering litigator, former TV presenter, and blogger, she has had essays and short stories published in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Rigorous, and Scarlet Leaf Review, among others. Born and raised in New Delhi, Judge now resides in California. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College and is the recipient of the 2021–2023 Advisory Board Award and Alumni Scholarship. She is married with two nearly grown and fully admirable children.
Judge applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Mercy and Grace, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Anoop Judge's website."Two-twen'y-five," the operator barked at Gia after she had stood at the entrance to the car for several seconds looking expectantly at him. He flicked his eyes down towards a machine that said "Cash Only" on it. Gia felt about for some money but the smallest she could produce was a five-dollar bill. Which, in and of itself, seemed embarrassing. "No change," he added in the same almost monosyllabic way. Gia gulped as she fed more than twice the cost of the fare into the machine, this whole escapade suddenly feeling extravagant and wrong now that she was wasting so much money to do it.I really wanted this test to work for this book but unfortunately, it does not. The page is of course critical to the larger work because it moves the plot forward and tells readers that Gia is new to America, but it conveys nothing of the larger themes of the book: gender, familial bonds, second chances, and the consequences of religious hatred.
Another part of her knew that she earned several times that amount each hour at work, that the meal at Pepe's had cost many tens of dollars between them, that everything here in America worked on an entirely different level to what she was used to, yet the panic attack that the whole thing set off inside her still felt right. Reasonable. She did not know when, or even if, the cost of things here would stop shocking her.
A cross between the Amazon TV series Made in Heaven, and Sejal Badani’s The Storyteller’s Secret, this novel explores the lasting impact of families fractured and repaired, with the narratives and protagonist stories playing out against the backdrop of big, fat Indian weddings.
Gia Kumari was an orphan on the edge of destitution in India until Sonia Shah of Golden State Weddings & Events offered the twenty-one-year-old an internship and brought her to San Francisco. Now she is a fish out of water, happily bathing in a world of excess and meeting her only known family—her Uncle Mohammed—for the first time, while also embarking on her first romantic relationship with the dashing yet quirky Adi.
What is described on page 69 is her first ride on a tram—she had spotted the distinctive San Francisco tram—green and cream colored with a red band around the middle—in the previous chapter, and in a mad impulse, decided to hop on it and see where it would lead her. It leads her to the dashing Adi who takes the same tram mid-route, and gets off at the iconic Castro St. . . . but you’ll have to read the novel to find out what happens next.
The Page 69 Test: No Ordinary Thursday.
--Marshal Zeringue
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