St. Francis of Assisi. She has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Her novel Mary Reilly was awarded the Kafka prize, shortlisted for the Prix Femina (France), and made into a motion picture directed by Stephen Frears and starring Julia Roberts and John Malkovitch. Property won Britain's Orange Prize (now called the Women's Prize) in 2003.
Martin applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Mrs. Gulliver, and reported the following:
I think the Page 69 Test works rather well on my novel Mrs. Gulliver.Visit Valerie Martin's website.
Page 69 has a discreet design ornament in the middle of it, signifying the end of one scene and the beginning of another. By this point all the major characters have been introduced save one. What’s interesting about this page is that all of them appear, though not together on this one page. Also, a major turn in the plot takes place in the first section.
The characters are Mrs. Gulliver, the narrator and madam of the brothel, Carità Bercy, a young, blind prostitute, new to the house, Ian Drohan, a college student with a crush on Carità, and Brutus Ruby, Mrs. Gulliver’s “colleague” who provides protection for the business.
Carità comes down the stairs of the brothel where she works to find Ian Drohan, a college boy who is taken with her, waiting near the bar in the drawing room. She takes her accustomed chair, and he procures a flute of champagne, which he brings to her. Mrs. Gulliver, the madam of the brothel, describes the scene.He bent over her, speaking softly. She smiled as her fingers closed on the glass stem, and she lifted her free hand to touch first her own cheek and then his. He kneeled before her, his face cradled in her hand, speaking earnestly, while she sipped his meager offering. She was fond of champagne.Then comes the scene break.
“This is too sweet,” I said to Brutus.
“I don’t trust that kid,” he replied.
The second section begins the following morning in the kitchen, when Bessie Bercy, comes to take her sister Carità for a walk. She brings a white folding walking stick and a straw hat. She has arrived “a little early” because she wants to talk with Mrs. Gulliver about “how Carità’s doing here.”
That’s the end of the page.
I think this page, oddly enough, gives a good sense of the world of the novel. The house itself, a sturdy Victorian with gleaming mahogany and carpeted stairs, is a character, as it provides both debasement and refuge for the women who work and live there. The drawing room is where men play and women work; but in the kitchen the women are free to drink, eat, gossip, and enjoy their well-earned time off. It’s night and day, and they are both on page 69.
--Marshal Zeringue
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