"Glamorous Notions"

Megan Chance is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of more than twenty novels, including A Dangerous Education, A Splendid Ruin, Bone River, and An Inconvenient Wife. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.

Chance applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Glamorous Notions, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Julia glanced around, seemingly casually, but Lena knew her well enough to see her tension. Julia rose and left the table, and Lena remained in the shadows. She didn’t like what she saw. There was something wrong, or even . . . ominous about this. Lena hesitated, wondering what to do.

Make the delivery was the obvious answer, and so she made her way to La Grotta, which of course was closed.

Lena pounded on the door until Tony answered. “What is it, Lena?”

“Where’s Petra?”

He opened the door wider to let her in. There were a couple people in the small kitchen behind the bar, Marco drinking coffee and Paolo gnawing on a sandwich.

“She’s in the back,” Tony said. “You want espresso?”

Lena shook her head and went through the curtain and out a narrow door into what could hardly be called a courtyard, just a narrow fenced-in brick square in the alley with the trash bins and a grill Tony sometimes used. Petra sat in a chair she had angled back against the railing, her eyes closed. Petra’s hair, as usual, was artfully piled on her head, looking ready to fall at any moment.

“Hey,” Lena said. “I’ve got something for you.”

This is only a part of page 69 in Glamorous Notions, but in it the main character, Lena, is on her way to make a delivery when she spots her closest friend, Julia, with a strange man at the restaurant Strega on the Via Veneto. Lena is in Rome studying fashion design at the Art Academy, and Julia has given Lena (who used to be Elsie) a new name and new confidence. Lena would do anything for Julia. Doing anything, at this particular moment, means involving herself in the exciting world of smuggling what she believes is small contraband—mostly hashish. For Lena, who comes from a small town in Ohio, everything about Rome and Julia is different, compelling, and wonderful, and under Julia’s tutelage, she feels herself changing into someone worldly and sophisticated, and she loves that. In this scene in particular, Lena is unsettled and confused by how different Julia looks, and how cold she seems. This is when Lena begins to realize that nothing is quite as it seems in Rome. This scene, in fact, is hugely important, because it marks the beginning of the danger that follows Lena back to Los Angeles and becomes the impetus for all the lies that make up the house of cards Lena builds for herself. It also gives a nascent sense of the uneasiness and vulnerability that become hallmarks of the story, and Lena’s state of mind, from this point on.

Visit Megan Chance's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Splendid Ruin.

The Page 69 Test: A Splendid Ruin.

Q&A with Megan Chance.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Education.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Education.

Writers Read: Megan Chance (February 2023).

Writers Read: Megan Chance.

My Book, The Movie: Glamorous Notions.

--Marshal Zeringue