"Three Eight One"

Aliya Whiteley is one of the most exciting talents in the UK. She is the author of seven books of speculative fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted Skyward Inn and The Loosening Skin, and also The Beauty, which was shortlisted for both a Shirley Jackson award and the Otherwise Award. She lives in Sussex with her husband and daughter.

Whiteley applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Three Eight One, and reported the following:

Three Eight One is a book that deliberately moves through a number of styles and genres, so I was intrigued to take the test. Would the contents of page 69 reflect anything about the novel as a whole? The answer was, weirdly, a resounding yes.

There are two narratives at work in Three Eight One. The main body is a fantasy quest adventure for a young woman who starts to find meaning in the odd experiences that come her way. The introduction, conclusion and footnotes are written by an amateur historian, living centuries in the future, who has uncovered the quest story among vast amounts of data, and has decided to investigate it. Key to both texts are small furry creatures called cha. They pop up everywhere, and start to create meaning.

What’s great about reading page 69 out of context is the fact that you get a bit of the quest, but also half of a footnote. These reflect the way the narratives interact in oblique ways to create the flow of the novel. In the quest, the young woman is talking about how she has befriended a group of cha who have welcomed her into their mountain home, and she has no idea why. They hop about and play games, and she’s aware that they have a strong smell. They seem benevolent. In the related footnote, the librarian of the future is talking about the concept of purity within twenty-first century cyber-culture. She calls it ‘a dark forest of meaning’. That’s the only clue to the fact that what comes next belongs more to horror than fantasy.

The narrator says, in the centre of the page:

Every afternoon the cha leave, and they return in the evening. Where do they go? I want to know. I need to know.

That need to know – to explore even the darkest things – drives the quest, the historian, and also drives the reader. I'm really pleased to find that the Page 69 Test works in this case. That page incorporates genres and ideas and fantastical yet also mundane narratives. It gives a sense of the loops and layers within both strands of Three Eight One.

Visit Aliya Whiteley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Arrival of Missives.

The Page 69 Test: Skyward Inn.

--Marshal Zeringue