"Real Life and Other Fictions"

Susan Coll is the author of seven novels, most recently Real Life & Other Fictions, which Kirkus calls “A kooky treasure.” Her other novels include Bookish People, The Stager, Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and Karlmarx.com.

Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, NPR.org, theatlantic.com, The Millions, and a variety of other publications including The Asian Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune. Her novel, Acceptance, was made into a television movie starring the hilarious Joan Cusack.

Coll is the recipient of three recent grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She works at Politics and Prose Bookstore, and was the president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation for five years. She teaches occasional workshops at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Coll applied the Page 69 Test to Real Life and Other Fictions and reported the following:

Page 69 of my novel involves a flashback to when the protagonist, Cassie, first meets her husband, Richard, more than 20 years before the novel is set. They are both in India for their respective journalism jobs, and they are seated next to one another at dinner at the home of a mutual acquaintance in New Delhi. Cassie describes their instantaneous attraction. She tries to keep Richard engaged in a sort of mindless banter about reflections on travel.

This is not a great page to land on to get a sense of the book, unfortunately. The largely whimsical tone of the book is not reflected on this page, which is more reflective and somber. But it does provide information critical to the rest of the story.

Richard is an unqualified jerk of a husband. He is a self-absorbed, and very handsome meteorologist whose career implodes so spectacularly that he becomes an internet meme. Readers might wonder what it was about Richard that Cassie had once found attractive, apart from his good looks. This flashback is meant to capture the chemistry of this first meeting.

But to get the true tone of the book, please begin with chapter 1, which is set on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and involves a comical scene that has Cassie running along the bridge, chasing her dog who has escaped from the car. The novel is about a (real) bridge collapse in West Virginia in 1967, and the legend of The Mothman. It is also about family secrets, and what it means to be a survivor.

Visit Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

--Marshal Zeringue