Hello Sunshine media company, and Follow Me (2020). A graduate of the University of Illinois and Northwestern University School of Law, she now lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and children.
Barber applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Both Things Are True, with the following results:
Page 69 of Both Things Are True drops the reader into the middle of a conversation Vanessa and Sam are having as they walk from a chance encounter at Walgreens toward either respective homes. This is, in fact, the first time the two of them have spoken in five years, and there's tension between them as they look for safe conversational ground. The Page 69 Test works because this scene is a really accurate representation of the story as a whole: Vanessa and Sam spend most of the book trying to figure out whether they should put the past—and those five years where they didn't speak—behind them, and how their lives might fit together now. In particular, this section in the middle of the page encapsulates so much of the drama between the two of them:Visit Kathleen Barber's website.But Sam doesn't ask about Jack, not directly. Instead, he says, "What are you doing in Chicago? Last I heard, you lived in New York."Those lines hit so many important points of the novel: (2) the looming shadow of Vanessa's ex-fiancĂ© Jack and what he did; (2) Vanessa moving in with her sister to rebuild her life; (3) Sam knowing everything about Vanessa; and (4) the ache of knowing that they once had love and lost it.
"I'm staying with my sister for a while. Trying something new."
"Faith, right?"
I blink, genuinely surprised. "I can't believe you remember my sister's name."
"Of course I do," he says softly. "She's important to you, and you were important to me."
Were. Were important. The verb tense is as sharp as a knife.
The Page 69 Test: Follow Me.
Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (March 2020).
12 Yoga Questions with Kathleen Barber.
--Marshal Zeringue
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