I was recently invited by  to put STILTSVILLE to the Page 69 Test. I’ve known about the Page 69 Test for a long while, and was very happy to do it. It’s not as easy as it looks — but basically, the idea is to look at page 69 (and only page 69) of your own novel, and explain whether it’s representative of the novel as a whole.

Here’s what I decided (you can read the full entry at The Page 69 Test’s website):

Read the full article at The Page 69 Test.

–Sd

I was invited recently to be interviewed by Anna Leigh Clark for her site Isak, a terrific site devoted to all things artistic and literary, where I lurk from time to time as a reader. Here’s a taste, and you can read the full interview at Isak.

AC: One of the most surprising aspects of Stiltsville is that it is sustained, over the span of decades, by the first-person voice of Frances — who is the sort of quiet character that I rarely see centered like this. Was it a struggle to craft this inward voice into fuel for an expansive novel?

SD: For me as a reader, a narrator’s resume makes almost no difference in comparison to that narrator’s lens, which determines what is called into focus and what is expanded and contracted in a narrative. Frances has a keen, unrelenting gaze and uses it to illuminate the world around her, both in terms of what is beautiful as well as what is unnerving or discordant. I think there are plenty of novels from the point of view of a quiet male character — James Hynes’ wonderful NEXTcomes to mind, as well as almost anything by Charles Baxter — but fewer from the point of view of a woman who is, on paper at least, not all that different from many women of my mother’s generation, and even of mine.

Read the full interview at Isak.

–Sd