The Page 69 Test: "The Spiral"

Tuesday, October 27, 2026

"The Spiral"

Rosanne Limoncelli is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Her short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, and Noir Nation,

and her short films have been screened in festivals around the world. Limoncelli also writes plays, screenplays, poetry, games, mysteries, and science fiction and has taught writing and filmmaking for more than three decades at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

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

From page 69:
The other students were a bit surprised at my performance, but I had an advantage. For them, the task was to use their imagination to guess what it might be like. For me, it was to wrangle a hurricane of emotions I was trying to forget. My chest still felt stormy. I was as surprised as they were. I was used to spending most of my energy suppressing ugly memories. During the exercise, something took over, outside of my power. So much for control.

I was the first to walk out of the room after Ron, but he made a quick exit, so I lost my chance to ask him what he knew about Jessica even if I could’ve worked up the courage. A blond, bubbly type that I slightly recognized came out of another classroom and stopped a few feet in front of me. She stared, her face turned white, then she wavered and felt for the wall to steady herself.

“What?” I stared back at her and put my hands on my hips.

“Oh. Oh! I thought you were someone else for a minute.” She let out a relieved laugh. “I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

She passed me and disappeared into the ladies’ room. I was already wrecked from that exercise. I didn’t need more drama. It wasn’t the first time someone had mistaken me for Jessica. But this time was different.

Marissa came out of the classroom, pulled me over near the empty coatrack, and lowered her voice.

“Are you okay?” She gave my arm a gentle squeeze. She knew a few details of my past.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” My heart was still dancing faster than normal, but I played it cool. “Just acting, you know.” Janette and Larry stopped next to us.

“Some scene, Nina,” Skinny Larry said. “I’d like to do an improv with you sometime.” He winked and gave me a kind of hungry look. Jerk. But then, anyone that skinny must always be hungry.
On opening The Spiral to page 69, readers will find themselves in the interior thoughts of the main character who has just come out of an acting class, which might not immediately be clear, but I do think they would feel that Nina is in an anxious situation, getting the tone of the book. By the end of the page, it is clearer that the characters just came out of class which gives a glimpse of her life. After the class she runs into a classmate that doesn’t really know her, and this classmate confuses her with a dead woman. Empathy from her friend Marissa is comforting, but Nina then is made more tense by Skinny Larry’s lewd comment, something she is confronted with often, but will never get used to.

The Spiral is a psychological noir thriller. The reader is inside Nina’s head, as paranoid and insecure as it is, because of her past and the crime ridden dangerous world around her. Nina may be fighting against a fatalistic world in this story, a difficult struggle, but it is also a battle that shows her strength of will. I think the page hints at all of this, albeit subtly.