"The Boyfriend"

Thomas Perry is the author of over 20 novels including the Jane Whitefield series (Vanishing Act, Dance for the Dead, Shadow Woman, The Face Changers, Blood Money, Runner, and Poison Flower), Death Benefits, and Pursuit, the first recipient of the Gumshoe Award for best novel.

He won the Edgar for The Butcher’s Boy, and Metzger’s Dog was a New York Times Notable Book. The Independent Mystery Booksellers’ Association included Vanishing Act in its “100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century,” and Nightlife was a New York Times bestseller.

Metzger’s Dog was voted one of NPR’s 100 Killer Thrillers--Best Thrillers Ever. Strip was chosen as a New York Times Notable Crime Book for 2010, and The Informant was a New York Times Notable Crime Book for 2011 and won the Barry Award for Best Thriller, 2011. Poison Flower was chosen among Booklist’s Best Crime Novels of 2013.

Perry applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Boyfriend, and reported the following:

I am a long-time fan of the test, and I think it works fairly well on my new novel, The Boyfriend. Jack Till, retired Los Angeles homicide detective now working as a P.I., has taken on an unusual case. He usually works the easy, simple cases that come his way, but this time he’s been hired by the parents of a murdered young woman. The LAPD has quietly given up on the case, because the victim had been working as an on-line escort, and so they haven’t been able to interview anyone, to identify the prints and DNA in her apartment, or even find anyone who knew her. Till has discovered, however, that several girls in similar circumstances have been killed in different cities, all of them strawberry blondes. He has also noticed that some of them advertised with photographs of themselves wearing a distinctive necklace. He has spent the night with one of them in Scottsdale, Arizona, then followed her to her house to see if the man who gave her the necklace is living with her.

On page 69, Till makes an unwelcome discovery. He looks around the outside of the house, knocks, and then looks in the windows. His detective experience makes him sense something is wrong. He uses a rock to break a window pane in the kitchen door, lets himself in, and finds the girl lying in her bed with a bullet hole in her temple and blood soaking the pillow. He knows the killer is only ahead of him by a few minutes. In other words, things are happening on 69, and I hope the reader wants to get on to page 70.

Learn more about the book and author at Thomas Perry's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Bull Slayer"

Bruce Macbain holds degrees in classical studies and ancient history, with a specialty in Greece and Rome. Upon retirement a few years ago, he decided to give up writing scholarly monographs which almost no one read, and turn to the more congenial realm of fiction. His debut mystery, Roman Games, set in first century AD Rome, was published by Poisoned Pen Press in 2010. His second novel, The Bull Slayer, comes out this March. Macbain is also a book reviewer for the Historical Novels Review.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest mystery, The Bull Slayer, and reported the following:

As it happens, page 69 of The Bull Slayer is exactly the page on which the sleuth gets his first break in the case. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger) has just been appointed governor of Bithynia, a Roman province in Asia Minor which is riddled with corruption and on the brink of rebellion. No sooner has Pliny arrived in the capital city than a the Fiscal Procurator (a universally loathed tax collector), vanishes without a trace. Neither the man’s wife nor his second-in-command will admit to having any idea what could have happened to him. As the days go by, tensions rise and Pliny is at a loss. And then one morning, as he and his staff are mulling over their lack of progress, there is a disturbance in the corridor outside Pliny’s office and a provincial citizen forces his way in.

The man straightened his clothes, took a breath to calm himself, and introduced himself as Isidorus, a dealer in fine silks and brocades. He had gone yesterday to the Street of the Leather Workers, he explained, to shop for a saddle and bridle, not your ordinary stuff but something expensive, a birthday present for his son-in-law, who was quite a gentleman and owned a horse. And he was in one shop, examining what was on offer, and quite a respectable place, the owner was known to him and not a dealer in stolen goods either, no certainly not. But there was a very handsome saddle for sale with matching bridle, all ornamented with turquoises and onyxes, and an embroidered saddle cloth with it, top quality, make no mistake, he knew quality when he saw it, and the thing of it was, you see, that it looked familiar, he knew he had seen that saddle somewhere before, and then it came to him—just like that!—perhaps some god whispered it in his ear, who could say? But he was dead certain that it was the procurator’s saddle, no question about it, that gentleman rode down his street every day on his way to the treasury, which is just past the Street of the Cloth Merchants, don’t you see?

Isidorus stopped and looked around him in alarm. They were all on their feet, Nymphidius’ fingers dug into his shoulder.

“Here now,” he squeaked, “no call for that!”

“Where,” Pliny brought his face close and spoke softly, “did this merchant get the saddle?”

“Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell your honors. A couple of peasants sold him the stuff. His wife is from their village, don’t you see, so they thought he’d give ’em a good price.”

“And where is this village?”

“He can tell you. He’s just outside. He doesn’t want any trouble.”

This information will lead Pliny to the procurator’s decomposing corpse, buried in a shallow grave deep in the forest, miles from anywhere. But what brought him there? And who of the many people who hated him had managed to kill him?

Learn more about the book and author at Bruce Macbain's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Journey from Darkness"

Gareth Crocker, a former journalist, lives with his wife and two children in Johannesburg, South Africa. He wrote Finding Jack, his first novel, in the company of his three dogs, Jill, Rusty and Jack.

Crocker applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Journey from Darkness, which was co-written with his father, Llewellyn Crocker, and reported the following:

Page 69 in Journey from Darkness is rather poignant. In it, the two main characters are sitting around a fire at night talking about how rampant poaching is placing elephants on the brink of oblivion in southern Africa. At the same time, Derek asks his brother, Edward (both British) if he will ever leave Africa now that he has a taste of it, to which Edward replies 'Sure. On my back and in a box'. This is a fitting foreshadow of what the brothers will soon face when they come up against a pair of highly dangerous French poachers who are almost Hannibal Lecter-esque in the way they murder and butcher with impunity. In many respects, Page 69 is the final breath of calm before the storm rolls in. To save a rare and almost mystical lone Desert Elephant, the brothers will soon journey into a darkness more black than the war they have left behind.

Learn more about the book and author at Gareth Crocker's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Finding Jack.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Gareth Crocker & Jill, Hannah, Rusty and Jack.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Secret of the Nightingale Palace"

Dana Sachs is the author of the novel If You Lived Here and two books of nonfiction, The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam and The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Secret of the Nightingale Palace, and reported the following:

I had to laugh when I picked up The Secret of the Nightingale Palace and turned to page 69. As the title suggests, the novel is about secrets, not just the secrets we keep from each other, but also the secrets that we keep from ourselves—the ways in which we lie to ourselves to keep from facing the truth. There is, though, a pretty big secret (a real secret, not an emotional secret) that is barely hinted at until the end of the story.

Why did I laugh on page 69, then? Because I do see a hint there. It’s the kind of hint that is only going to be detected by those who have already read the book, but it is definitely there on that page. The novel follows a grandmother, Goldie, and her granddaughter, Anna, as they drive from New York to San Francisco to return a valuable collection of Japanese art to its former owners, a Japanese family who gave it to Goldie for safekeeping when they were sent to the internment camps during World War II. Anna can’t understand why Goldie has taken so long (sixty years!) to finally return the art, and Goldie isn’t telling.

This passage on page 69 begins a chapter called “A Famously Happy Marriage.” The beginning of the chapter describes Goldie’s relationship with her cellphone. At 85-years-old, she has a hard time with the technology, but “she loved everything about the phone, especially the caller ID and the option to press IGNORE if she didn’t want to answer. She still looked rattled and perplexed every time the phone rang, however.” An astute reader might sense a heightened level of anxiety about the telephone that isn’t fully explained by Goldie’s confusion about how to answer the thing. That anxiety, in my mind, comes from a worry that she could receive a call that she doesn’t want to answer when her granddaughter is listening. In other words, she’s got a secret to keep.

Learn more about the book and author at Dana Sachs's website, blog, and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fellow Mortals"

Dennis Mahoney lives in upstate New York.

He applied the Page 69 Test to Fellow Mortals, his first novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Fellow Mortals is surprisingly representative of the whole novel. It's a scene featuring my hero, Henry Cooper, and his wife Ava having a bedroom argument. The book is about Henry, a mailman who accidentally sets fire to several houses on his route. Henry, a good-hearted optimist, is wracked with guilt and tries to make amends with the victims, especially a man named Sam whose wife died in the fire.

The page 69 scene occurs shortly after Henry's first visit to Sam, which was understandably tense and even dangerous. Henry, who has a heart condition, insisted on helping Sam with some grueling physical labor. When Ava learns that Henry literally risked his life -- it won't be the last time -- she's caught between anger at his recklessness and loving appreciation of his desire, and need, to help the people he's hurt.

So they argue about this, but it's a loving argument, with Henry apologetic (and not truly willing to give up helping) and Ava stern (but pitying and forgiving). This particular page features a lot of what made the characters and story so compelling to write about. There's open conflict, both muddied and clarified by secret conflict. There's a moment of marriage that feels true to me, because of its shorthand communication, layered emotion, and air of private space. I feel like a reader would understand that this is a warm, healthy relationship even in the middle of an argument. And Ava's mixture of depression and hope -- of weariness from so much difficulty, combined with a clear vision of the simpler life she's longing for -- makes the second half of the page a good example of the book's main colors. What if you lost everything? What if you tried to rebuild?

It's certainly not my favorite page of the book, but it does provide a good window.

Learn more about the book and author at Dennis Mahoney's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fade to Black"

Francis Knight was born and lives in Sussex, England. She has held a variety of jobs from being a groom in the Balearics, where she punched a policeman and got away with it, to an IT administrator.

When not living in her own head, she enjoys SF&F geekery, WWE geekery, teaching her children Monty Python quotes, and boldly going and seeking out new civilizations.

Knight applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Fade to Black, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Fade to Black gets you right where things start making sense to the MC, Rojan. Or at least he thinks so – he’ll learn. In painful detail.

Rojan is a pain mage – illegal, wanted, hiding. More, he’s disparaging of his own magic. As he says, dislocating his own thumb to power a spell is pretty damned stupid, putting it mildly. His particular form of magic involves knowing where people are. Still, even in his life as a bounty hunter he tries not to use it unless he’s desperate. That is, until his niece is kidnapped and the only way he has of finding out where she is, is to use his magic. Having reluctantly done so, his next problem involves getting to a place that, officially at least, doesn’t exist, or if it does is supposedly an environmental disaster, and full of poisonous runoff and dead people, not to mention he doesn’t know how to get to it. To solve that problem, his mentor advises him to go and see ‘The Man Who Knows Everything’–

Tam laughed, looking like a wrinkled gnome who’s found he can make any wish come true with a wink of his eye. ‘That’s what the Ministry say, but when do they ever tell the truth? They sealed a lot of them down there, the dregs they wanted to do without. They thought the synth would kill them soon enough, and they’d be rid of all those too undesirable, too feckless and faithless to live in their brave new clean pious city. Only it’s not brave or clean, is it? They left them there to die, Mr Dizon. And when they didn’t die, or not all of them, the Archdeacon found a use for them.’

Left them there to die of the synth. I shook my head in shock, but it was likely true. In the ’Pit, who knew? It was sealed, but the tainted run-off from Upside was likely still filtering through – the water had to go somewhere. Now here was Tam, saying that people lived in that horror? The thought made me squirm. Not least because it looked like that was where I was headed.

And head to it he does, not without some serious misgivings. Once he’s there, he soon finds out that Ministry have been lying even worse than this jaded cynic thought…

Learn more about the book and author at Francis Knight's website.

My Book, The Movie: Fade to Black.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Black Sheep"

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of eighteen novels, former pediatric ER doctor CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge Thrillers with Heart.

Lyons has been called a "master within the genre" (Pittsburgh Magazine) and her work has been praised as "breathtakingly fast-paced" and "riveting" (Publishers Weekly) with "characters with beating hearts and three dimensions" (Newsday).

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Black Sheep, and reported the following:

Black Sheep follows FBI Special Agent Caitlyn Tierney as she tackles the one mystery that has haunted her all her life: her father's suicide.

After his death when she was nine years old, Caitlyn and her mother moved away from Caitlyn's western North Carolina home and she hasn't been back since. Now, twenty-six years later, she's involuntarily getting sucked into a case that will force her to return home and finally face her past.

Page 69 is pivotal in the story as it's the point where Caitlyn must decide whether to put the needs of a missing girl first and return to the last place she was seen, Caitlyn's home town. Her only ally is a convicted killer.

Great. A self-confessed killer her number one fan. "I don't even know where to start looking for her. Surely he gave you some specifics?"

"He said she'd gone home to Evergreen. It's a small town in the mountains, near Cherokee."

Evergreen. Caitlyn's mom's had left her entire family behind when she'd moved Caitlyn away from Evergreen, trying to distance Caitlyn from the memory of her dad. It hadn't worked, but Caitlyn still felt a chill at the mention of the town. She'd been nine years old when she'd last seen Evergreen.

"Yeah, I know the place," she told Whitford.

Twenty-five years being locked up had driven the man insane. Sending her on a wild goose chase after a girl they didn't even know for certain was missing and a mysterious conspiracy that probably existed only in a convicted killer's mind.

But Caitlyn was no miracle worker. She was already breaking every rule in the book just by being here. She might have even gotten Hale killed by coming to see him. The expression on Hale's face as he lay there dying…the face of her father, blood everywhere. Too many memories, too much pain.

All leading back to Evergreen. Didn't mean she had to play the game, follow the bread crumbs. Caitlyn yanked the gearshift to put the Impreza in reverse. "If you think of anything else, call me. Anytime, day or night."

"What are you going to do about Lena?"

"I'm going home."

Taking that first step to returning to her childhood home is also Caitlyn's first step to facing her greatest fears: that her father didn't love her, choosing death over his family; that her mother's emotional distance is caused by Caitlyn's own inability to trust; and that there are secrets buried so deep, betrayals so close, that her need to save one girl might destroy her.

Black Sheep is a dark, psychological suspense that continues the themes first brought up in Blind Faith and wrestles with the questions: who do we decide to trust and how do we protect our hearts against betrayal?

Learn more about the author and her work at CJ Lyons' website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ghostman"

Roger Hobbs graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 2011, where he majored in English. He studied film noir, literary theory, and ancient languages.

His first book, Ghostman, was written during the summer between his junior and senior years at Reed. He spent the school year rewriting it and editing. The manuscript was sent off on the day he graduated​. A few weeks later it caused an uproar at the 2011 Frankfurt Book Fair, and has since sold in more than fifteen countries around the world.

Hobbs applied the Page 69 Test to Ghostman and reported the following:

Excerpt from page 69:

I opened the bag of pills. I sniffed the mouth of the bag a few times. They were a pressed white powder, which means they were made in a factory. That doesn't mean much, though. A lot of drugs come out of factories, even illegal ones. There are whole industrial complexes in South America that press fake Oxycontin. These pills weren't Oxy, though. They smelled slightly clinical, like a polished hospital floor. I thought that they could have been some form of speed, like methamphetamine, but they were equally likely to be aspirin. For all I knew, one of these guys got really severe migraines.

Finally I took out the cell phone. It had a design that hadn't been popular in a few years. I pressed the green button, and I guess it had been charged because the screen flashed on right away and went into start-up. When the logo went away and the home screen popped up, I spent a minute trying to find any stored contacts. The list was completely empty. Then I looked for the list of recent activity. There had been a series of missed calls from a blocked number starting just this morning, but not a single voice-mail. The one outgoing call was over a week old. New York area code.

I put the phone away, took out the one Alexander had given me, powered it up and dialed Marcus' number.[...]

In this scene my narrator, a career criminal who simply goes by Jack (or the cryptic alias, "Ghostman"), is examining a bunch of unusual items in a backpack he finds stashed away in a secret storage unit used by the man he's trying to find. This page is quite indicative of the novel as a whole, I think. First things first, we get a great taste of Jack's tough, no-nonsense hardboiled narration. He is a rough and plainspoken guy, who speaks to the reader conversationally as if he were telling you a story in a bar. He may be tough, but he's still relatable.

Second (and more importantly), this passage is descriptive. Ghostman excels at its fun, didactic descriptions of a criminal's world. My book doesn't just show the reader what's inside the backpack-- it lets the reader into Jack's tough, knowledgeable criminal mind. We don't just see pills, we see everything they could or couldn't be: Oxycontin, methamphetamine, or even just plain old aspirin. Ghostman isn't just a thriller novel, it is practically a primer course on all things bank robbery.

The only downside is that nothing exciting happens on page 69, which is rare. The page is a little boring and light on action. However, one thing's for sure: if you like this page, you'll love my book.

Learn more about the book and author at Roger Hobbs's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Into the Dark"

Alison Gaylin is the author of And She Was, the Edgar®-nominated thriller Hide Your Eyes, as well as its sequel, You Kill Me, and two stand-alone novels, Trashed and Heartless.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Into the Dark, and reported the following:

The sequel to And She Was, my new book Into the Dark, focuses on a missing webcam girl named Lula Belle – a naked, shadow-draped “performance artist” who stretches and bends seductively as she tells tales from her youth. The series protagonist Brenna Spector – a PI with perfect autobiographical memory -- is fascinated by Lula Belle. But it’s for a very different reason than her rapt male audience. Many of the stories she tells sounds exactly like stories from Brenna’s own childhood, leading the troubled investigator to believe that this strange, shadowy figure may have ties to her long-gone sister, Clea.

On page 69 of the book, Brenna watches a Lula Belle download with her friend (and perhaps more) Det. Nick Morasco. It’s the first time Nick has seen Lula Belle – and he too, appears to be under her spell… but for reasons all his own:

“He didn’t smile back, didn’t drink. He set his bottle down on the coffee table and leaned forward and his expression changed, deepened into something Brenna couldn’t quite figure out. It wasn’t the rapt, obvious lust with which Trent had watched Lula Belle. Sure, she supposed he could have been turned on and trying to hide it from her, but it seemed to Brenna more of a sadness.

Lula Belle said, “I kept thinking, if I was the reason why that little bird lived… then I must have been the reason why he died. Right?”

Morasco swallowed hard. He closed his eyes.

Brenna clicked off the download. “Powerful stuff, this performance art.”

“It is.”

“Nick?”

He looked at her.

She knew she had no right to ask, not when she couldn’t stand in a parking lot for five minutes without lapsing into a memory she couldn’t talk about. She knew it wasn’t fair, but she put her hand on his, and she asked him anyway. “When you watched that video, what were you thinking?”

Learn more about the book and author at Alison Gaylin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Town of Empty Rooms"

Karen E. Bender is the author of the novel Like Normal People, which was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

She applied the Page 69 Test to A Town of Empty Rooms, her second novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 of A Town of Empty Rooms features Serena Hirsch following Rabbi Golden and Betty Blumenthal as they try to find a home for the Southeastern North Carolina Jewish Community Center, an imagined gathering place that has never existed in the area. The three of them walk through buildings in various shades of ruin, and the Rabbi is full of an enormous, painful hope.

“There were only a few properties within the current budget. They stopped to investigate a plot of pine forest off the interstate, a crumbling mansion with eight bedrooms, an abandoned elementary school dark with mold. The three of them wandered through one building that the rabbi had chattered about excitedly; it was a private school that had recently been foreclosed. It was been damaged in a storm, and there were brown clouds of water damage on the walls. There were ten, fifteen large rooms, and they all smelled as though they were sinking into the earth.

Betty walked through each room slowly, marking down each bit of damage. The rabbi flew through the rooms like a deer.

“Look at it,” he said. “Room to grow. It’s perfect!”

“Rabbi,” said Betty, looking concerned, “it’s a dump.”

“Great! We get it cheap!” he said. “Come on! We’re this close to signing the Rosens. The father owns the biggest toy store in town. They have five cars!”

“Rabbi,” said Betty, softly.

“What’s wrong?”

“There are too many rooms.”

In this scene, I wanted to show Rabbi Golden’s bright, rather deluded expansiveness, as it is one element that energizes his congregation, and brings comfort to Serena; it also creates conflict with Betty, who thinks he is, well, blind. Betty carefully and practically lays out why the moldy, dilapidated building is not a good investment. The way that Rabbi Golden responds to Betty, and to others in his congregation, as they interfere with his dream, is an important element of the novel. This is one moment in which people talk past each other in the book, in which they’re stuck in their own limited selves. I liked writing this scene because the contrast between the actual ruined nature of the building and the rabbi’s grand plans for it was so sad and beautiful, in a way, to me.

Learn more about the book and author at Karen Bender's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Town of Empty Rooms.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Perfect Hatred"

Leighton Gage’s books are crime novels set in Brazil. The author has lived in Australia, Europe, and South America and traveled widely in Asia and Africa. He visited Spain in the time of Franco, Portugal in the time of Salazar, South Africa in the time of apartheid, Chile in the time of Pinochet, Argentina in the time of the junta, Prague, East Germany, and Yugoslavia under the Communist yoke. He and his wife spend much of the year in a small town near São Paulo, and the rest in Europe and the United States, where they have children and grandchildren.

Gage applied the Page 69 Test to Perfect Hatred, his new novel featuring Chief Inspector Mario Silva, and reported the following:

In the five previous books in my series about the Brazilian Federal Police, Chief Inspector Mario Silva threatens criminals, but almost never, except in the heat of the moment, comes under threat himself.

There’s an expression in Brazil that translates as “rich people don’t go to jail” – and, within a justice system in which lawmen, prosecutors and judges could often be bribed, it long held true.

Now, things are changing.

Orlando Muniz, a landowner, whom we first met in Blood of the Wicked, runs a real risk of going to prison unless he can eliminate the principal witness against him.

And that witness is Chief Inspector Mario Silva.

Being the wealthiest of men, Orlando isn’t the kind of man who would undertake a murder himself. As in virtually everything else in his life, he hires others to do it for him.

On page 69 of Perfect Hatred, he’s doing just that, hiring a killer, and introducing a new thread into a story that already has several other ones running at the same time.

And they all come together in the book’s final pages.

Which is a pretty neat trick, if I do say so myself.

Learn more about the book and author at Leighton Gage's website and the Murder is Everywhere blog.

The Page 69 Test: Blood of the Wicked.

My Book, The Movie: Buried Strangers.

The Page 69 Test: Dying Gasp.

The Page 69 Test: Every Bitter Thing.

The Page 69 Test: A Vine in the Blood.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Good Kids"

Benjamin Nugent is the author of Good Kids, a novel (Scribner, 2013) and American Nerd, a mix of history and memoir (Scribner, 2008). Born in Massachusetts in 1977, he was educated at Reed College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His essays have appeared in the New York Times Op/Ed page, the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. His short stories have appeared in Tin House and The L Magazine. Director of Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University, he teaches in its MFA and undergraduate programs.

Nugent applied the Page 69 Test to Good Kids and reported the following:

The paragraph I’m going to quote bleeds into p. 70, but it starts on Page 69. The scene is a private island. The narrator Josh, 16 years old, is playing catch with his sister Rachel, his father Linus, his father’s girlfriend Laura, and her father Bruce, owner of the island. They’re trying to act like a family.

There was still a coat of orange on the waves when Bruce’s second wife Laura, the age of Allison plus the age of Rachel, excused herself from our five-way game of catch. (We threw an Aerobie, a red, soft-edged torus not unlike a giant, flattened cock ring.) She returned thirty seconds later to beckon us inside with both her slender arms. A former teacher of special-needs children (it was in this profession that she had discovered how easy an Aerobie was to catch) her movements were lumbering and joyful, the movements of one accustomed to chasing and gathering up. Her hair, a mix of blond and gray, fell between her shoulders; her face was scrunched and kind; her smock a diaphanous tribute to the Russian villagers of Fiddler on the Roof; her butt, in her crimson, one-piece bathing suit, jutting and hard like the golden rocks. She led us to the kitchen, which at first looked ordinary. Only string beans and scalloped potatoes somehow hissed on two skillets, and firm flanks of white fish somehow steamed on a metal sheet. The servants had vanished after they had finished their work, so that it was as if we had cooked for ourselves and suffered a loss of memory. Ordinary: We piled our plates with food and took them to a table on a screened-in porch. Ordinary: We praised the meal as if one our party had prepared it. Our performance was spontaneous, heartfelt, if unnatural; it had the feeling of the first practice of a rock band.

The Aerobie looks like a cock ring to Josh because he discovered a cock ring in his father’s backpack a year earlier, shortly before his parents separated. He’s getting acquainted with what it might mean to have a stepmother by watching his potential stepmother strive to be convivial with her own stepmother. He’s just started to play in garage bands with other kids, and this is the first time he draws an analogy between a band trying to get its shit together and an ad hoc family trying to act like a real family. When he grows up, he’ll seek to make a band work as a substitute for a family, and then he’ll try to make a family work as a substitute for a band. I try to dramatize the way apparently unexceptional moments carry the seeds of the future, traces of the past.

Learn more about the book and author at Benjamin Nugent's website.

See Benjamin Nugent top six books on the mannerisms of 20- & 30-somethings.

--Marshal Zeringue