Earlier work includes USA Today and international bestselling novels Five Days in Summer, One Cold Night, and The Money Kill, the fourth installment of her Karin Schaeffer series published by HarperCollins and nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She teaches fiction writing at The New School in Manhattan and lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Lief applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Invisible Woman, and reported the following:
When you open Invisible Woman to page 69, you’re dropped into a story that has built carefully to this moment, when the plot pivots in a new direction. You’ll come away with a good sense of what’s at stake for one of the novel’s secondary characters, which has a direct impact on the main storyline. But you won’t meet the novel’s protagonist on that page and so it doesn’t reflect the story’s major narrative voice which drives most of the novel forward. This might count as a spoiler, so don’t read more if you want to come to the novel fresh.Visit Katia Lief's website.
On page 69, Val, the best friend of protagonist Joni, has just revealed a long-held secret to her husband Russ. Russ is shocked but supportive; he reassures Val that he’s with her no matter what comes next.
The novel opens in 2018, and the plot hangs on the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements yanking aside a veil of silence that had long kept women quiet about all kinds of diminishment and even violence suffered in all aspects of their lives. Joni and Val have held tight to an assault suffered by Val decades in the past when they were young women starting their careers in Hollywood, Joni as a filmmaker and Val as an actress. The assault locked them into a pact of silence that ultimately pushed them apart. Now, years later, a piece of salacious breaking news out of Hollywood puts their secret front and center.
Joni tracks down Val and urges her to seize the moment and finally tell the world what happened to her, insisting that sharing her experience will empower other women and also strengthen the legal case that’s sure to develop out of the headlines. Val isn’t sure she’s ready, but she’s come to think that Joni’s right. Telling Russ is the first step forward. Page 69 shows his reaction to the shocking news.
The Page 69 Test: Next Time You See Me.
The Page 69 Test: Vanishing Girls.
The Page 69 Test: Last Night.
Q&A with Katia Lief.
--Marshal Zeringue
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