Nye applied the Page 69 Test to The Curators and reported the following:
"Well, if she was going to disobey, she might as well do it right."Visit Maggie Nye's website.
That's the last sentence on page 69 of The Curators. On this page, my protagonist, Ana Wulff, has broken off from her group of close-knit friends (the self-named "Felicitous Five") to make good (in her own, meddlesome way) on a dare. Specifically, she is leaving her wealthy, Jewish neighborhood to travel to a poorer, largely Black part of town on the (deeply misguided) suspicion that she will find a “voodoo woman” there to help her pull off a feat of magic.
Sadly, I think if my book were to be judged blind on page 69 alone, the reader would have absolutely no idea what was going on, as the page begins smack in the middle of a remembered (past) conversation with no dialogue tags. Thankfully for you, reader, the whole book is available to you, and you needn't be confused, for there are many pages that precede this one, and many that follow it!
In spite of the Page 69 Test's failure to work super duper accurately. This page (and chapter) marks a significant break in the book. Up until this point, Ana has operated largely inside the collective, as one member of her friend group, but here, we see the beginnings of a fracture. She has struck off along, taking matters into her own hands, and not without some resentment. For example, halfway down the page is the line, "She would make them regret taking her for granted." and on the very next page, she contemplates what her departure from the others means:
There was the word itself, solitude. How very different it was to think herself a solitary adventurer instead of a girl alone. One word imparts “sole” and “only” and “solid,” and the other: “lone,” “lonely,” a frightened girl’s word. Today, she decided, she would not be frightened. (70)
My Book, The Movie: The Curators.
Q&A with Maggie Nye.
--Marshal Zeringue
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