"The Inheritance"

Joanna Goodman's novels include the #1 national bestseller, The Home for Unwanted Girls, which was on The Globe & Mail’s Fiction bestseller list for more than six months, as well as The Forgotten Daughter and The Finishing School, both national bestsellers. Her stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, B & A Fiction, Event, The New Quarterly, and White Wall Review, as well as excerpted in Elisabeth Harvor’s fiction anthology A Room at the Heart of Things.

Originally from Montreal, Goodman now lives in Toronto with her husband and two kids.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Inheritance, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“It looks like a crime scene,” Arden says, turning on the lights.

“It probably is a crime scene,” Tate reminds her.

Virginia’s bedroom is still exactly as it was left the night of the assault. The duvet and sheets are still in a heap on the floor, with pillows and clothes strewn everywhere. Also on the floor are the lamp from her bedside table, some books, the portable phone and base, and shards of broken glass stained with red wine. There’s still blood on the sheets and mattress.

Arden’s been here once to collect a bunch of her mother’s things, but she didn’t have time to clean up. It was the day after the assault and Arden was still in a daze. She grabbed as much as she could for her mother and fled. It’s the first time Tate is seeing it.

“I’m going to wash all the bedding,” Arden says, bending down to collect the pieces of glass on the floor.

“Do you think you should?” Tate says. “What if his DNA is on it?”

“Really? This isn’t an episode of CSI.”

“Seriously, Arden. Who knows? Just put the fitted sheet in a plastic bag. You can wash everything else.”

Tate puts the lamp back on the table, gathers the books in a pile. “What the hell do you think happened here?”

Interestingly, the Page 69 Test worked perfectly for the back story of my novel. The page actually thrusts the reader right into the heart of the drama unfolding alongside - but secondary to - the main story, which is the courtroom drama surrounding the inheritance case. I do think reading this page would set the reader up to expect a novel about a sexual assault and specifically about elder abuse, but ultimately it doesn’t say much about the main storyline or about any of the primary themes of the novel. In that sense, I would have to say in that sense, the “test” is not a great indicator about the book as whole.

What I do love about how this experiment works for The Inheritance is that the first line stands alone as an exciting entry point into a juicy suspense novel. It looks like a crime scene. What a great first line to set up a mystery/crime novel, which is definitely a key component in The Inheritance, if not the primary one. I think the rest of the page also builds on the suspense of the first line, establishing a compelling mystery about what happened, who did it happen to, and who did it? I also love that there is mention of DNA on page 69, and ultimately, DNA will prove to be the crux of the entire inheritance case. In that way, it does drop a significant clue and foreshadow what’s to come in the main story as well.

Visit Joanna Goodman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue