Her entry begins:
In my own fiction, I am driven by what I cannot say. I write to find words for what lies past words. Every novel I have written starts with some dark thing I can’t quite bring myself to tell, and so I tell it on the slant, through the story.Among the early praise for Game of Secrets:
Most of the novels I adore have a quality of otherness about them. There is as well a certain cadence to the work. I feel that along with voice, the rhythm of a narrative is a key element of creating fiction that is often overlooked. Rhythm draws a reader through a story. The meanings of words touch the mind—the twists in plot engage the intellect—but that cadence calls forth a deeper more intuitive connection to the lives of the characters. A shift in rhythm allows a reader to feel a shift in thought, a change of heart, that breath-caught-sharp moment of a revelation.
I am shamefully particular about what I read. I know the instant I read the first page of a book if the voice is one that will carry me.
About three weeks ago, my step-mother left two novels at my house. One quite well known—I had heard so much talk—I was sure I wanted to read it. I picked it up, did my first page test. No. I set it down. The next morning I was eating my toast. The other book lay on the counter. A slight novel called Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, 173 pages, published first in 1957. I flipped it open, read the first line, and felt that sense of falling somewhere in me—what I always feel when I read the first line of a novel that I will...[read on]
"A combination of thriller, mystery, and literary fiction; the secrets of a murder are revealed through an intense Scrabble game.... An intelligent beach-read."Learn more about the book and author at Dawn Tripp's website.
—The Boston Phoenix
"This novel has it all, a mystery with an addictive plot and plot twists, complex characters, a scandalous affair, complete with details of clandestine meetings. Literary thriller fans will enjoy this creative work. I was hooked from the very beginning, and I was able to read this book in just one afternoon. It is certainly one of the best literary thrillers, that I've read in a while."
—Bibliophile By the Sea
"A gracefully told character study of three intelligent, forbidding women and the men who love them, wrapped up in a taut, suspenseful mystery, Tripp's third novel builds to a surprising finish"
—Booklist
"Elizabeth Strout fans will find a lot to admire about Dawn Tripp's new novel, cleverly framed around the idea of revealing old family mysteries through a continuing series of Scrabble games between two aging matriarchs ….[A] flair for drop-dead Yankee storytelling…as a grown daughter searches for clues to her long-lost father's ultimate fate in the arrangement of tiny wooden letters"
—Minneapolis Star Tribune Summer Preview
"A hypnotic literary mystery. Startlingly original, Tripp's haunting new novel explores the secrets we keep even from ourselves."
–Caroline Leavitt , author of Pictures of You
"A brilliant metaphor is at play in the center of Game of Secrets, Dawn Tripp's extraordinary new novel. In the ongoing play of a board game, in a surprising, hauntingly resonant plot, and in complex, compelling characters, she illuminates deep truths about the way we try to piece the world together into meaning, working with what we are given, struggling with family and fate and desire…. This is a truly important work by one of our finest writers."
– Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain
The Page 69 Test: Game of Secrets.
Writers Read: Dawn Tripp.
--Marshal Zeringue
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