Category: Modern Fiction

Foregone

By Russell Banks

Published 2021

Read Aug 2025

This reader took a break from Louise Penny this summer and read a book by an author that has been highly reliable for this reader to provide an interesting read.

Leonard Fife entered Canada from the US in 1968, presumably to avoid the draft.  He became a documentary film maker and taught this subject at the graduate school level.  His wife, Emma, was one of his students.  She left her husband and children to be with him, and she has been with him as a producer for many years. Leonard is now quite ill and in hospice in his home.  He has invited another of his students, Malcolm, to make a documentary film about him.  The present day story line evolves over a few days of filming.

Malcolm is hoping Leonard will talk about the making of some of his great documentaries, but Leonard has other ideas.  He doesn’t answer the questions Malcolm wants him to address.  Rather, he focuses on telling his life story from the beginning. It’s not clear whether Leonard is going to make it more than a day.  Each time there is a pause, his nurse requests he take a rest.  Emma wants him to stop as well both because what he is saying isn’t pretty and because she too knows he needs to rest.  She threatens to leave the room, but he insists she stay.  He says he is telling the story for her. Leonard wants Emma to know his story.  Maybe she doesn’t want to know his whole story, but Leonard doesn’t want to die without her knowing it.

Bank’s prose is unrelenting and we also at times wish Leonard would stop but we know he won’t, and we know Banks won’t let us and we are glad for that too.

How to Read a Book

By Monica Wood

Published 2024

Read Aug 2025

This was the first Monica Wood book for this reader.  It was recommended to this reader by a fellow reader with reliable recommendations (including the Dr Siri series).  She indicated that she found it engaging and read it quite quickly as a result.  That was a good enough recommendation for this reader so the search for a copy ensued.  Libby and Cloud Library that this reader could access had the book, but with long wait times.  This reader tried Hoopla which usually was a reliable source for “older” books and this reader was very pleasantly surprised to find an eBook copy available for immediate loan.

Two days later this reader had finished the book and thoroughly agreed that it was very engaging and a really enjoyable read.  Monica Wood provided a story of complex characters simply but powerfully. 

Violet is twenty-two years old and in prison for manslaughter.  She was driving the car that hit another car and killed its driver.  She was eighteen and in the process of leaving town with her boyfriend.  He made her the driver because he realized he was under the influence of too many drugs and alcohol to be trusted.  She wasn’t sober either.  Violet suddenly finds herself released from prison a bit early.  Her sister picks her up from prison and deposits her at an apartment in Portland she has secured for her.  Violet is very unsettled with this as she expected to return to her small town, not Portland, and especially because her sister has told her that neither she nor any other family member wants anything to do with her. 

Violet had been a member of a prison book club led by Harriet, a widowed English teacher, who is finally finding some meaning in post-retirement life through this activity that she provides for a collection of imprisoned women.  We enjoy learning about her book selections for the prisoners and their reactions to them.  An outcome of this is that this reader now has interest in reading “Spoon River Anthology”, a book this reader managed to never previously encounter.

The third main character is Frank, the husband of the woman Violet killed.  He is also retired and also has found retirement difficult until he creates a job for himself at a local independent bookstore who needs a handy-man to address maintenance issues that the young book-loving owners can’t manage themselves.  Frank is interested in speaking with Harriet who frequents the bookstore to find and order books for her prison book club, but he is shy, and his initial attempt is ineffective.  When Violet turns up at the bookstore while Frank and Harriet are there, Frank has a bit of a meltdown when he sees Violet, whom he hasn’t seen since the trial.   Harriet scurries Violet away.  Thus, the three become connected and the story takes off. 

The action of this book occurs over a few months.  The book tells the story by alternating between the three characters which engaged this reader quickly and completely.  We root for Violet as she gets a job that she loves, but we become concerned about her boss’s actions towards her.  We hope that Frank and Harriet can find a way towards each other.  Monica Wood tells these stories in a compelling but not overly sweet way.  She also gives us the back story of each of these characters which confirms that they are coping with human disappointments as they figure out how to live day by day.

This reader truly appreciated the author’s insights regarding retirees and their transition into the “retired” state when their work life has ended.  This reader also found it interesting that the author’s third character was a young woman who is trying to re-start her life after it was disrupted in such a truly life-changing way just as she was hoping her life was starting. 

At first, the ending felt a little abrupt to this reader but then it felt quite perfect.  How else would this reader want the book to go?  

This book compelled me to read more about Monica Wood and more by her.  You’ll find posts for several of these books at this site; search the “books by author” page for Monica Wood to locate them.  This reader certainly hopes Monica Wood will keep writing!

The One in a Million Boy

By Monica Wood

Published 2015

Read Sept 2025

The structure of this book was very appealing to this reader.  There are two story arcs:  one of a boy (unnamed), likely “on the spectrum”, and the 104-year-old woman (Ona) for whom he is doing a boy scout service project; the other of the father of  this deceased boy (we learn this very soon in the book—this is not a spoiler) as he fulfills the remainder of his son’s service project after his son’s death.  The story of the boy and Ona is told through the recordings he made of Ona as he’s drawing her story out of her and simultaneously pushing her to seek a Guiness Book of World Records regarding something about her age.  The father’s story is told in a more usual style using his thoughts to describe the past situation—he was a professional guitarist who married his girlfriend when they learn she is pregnant—which, in addition to the loss of his son, help us understand his current mindset and actions.  He is grieving for his son, he is grieving for being a bad dad, he is grieving for the failure of his relationship with the boy’s mother (they married and divorced twice), and he is continuing to try to make it as a professional musician, a very difficult career path. 

Wood can draw such wonderful pictures of real humans that, although you may never know someone like them, you now know them so well.  This reader really appreciates this gift of hers, and it certainly drives this reader to read more from her.

This reader finds it strange that she cannot find a New York Times review of this book or any other of her books since her second one, My Only Story.  Possibly this is because that review indicated “Wood, whose first novel was titled ”Secret Language,” is an often graceful writer, and her appreciation of tragic lives that still manage to embrace love is marred only by a bit too much sentimentality.”  (1) This faint praise may have unfortunately eliminated her from a list of authors they follow since this book is as good or better than many this reader has read that they have reviewed.  Her publishers may not have done enough to ensure appropriate reviews and prizes but this reader is definitely a fan and highly recommends her books. 

• https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/bib/010304.rv101409.html retrieved Sept 19, 2025

Any Bitter Thing

By Monica Wood

Published 2005

Read Sept 2025

This reader tore through much of Wood’s canon because each book she read was so compelling, had interesting and fully fleshed characters, and often a twist or two.  This book is no exception.

Thirty-year-old Lizzy has much to process.

Following a fight with her husband, Lizzy went for a run at night, dressed in dark clothes (not smart!) and was a victim of a hit-and-run accident that left her near death and right in the middle of the road.  The next car stops; the driver pulls her to the side of the road and then leaves without calling for help for her.  This is not the first time Lizzy has been left quite alone. 

Her parents died in a car accident when she was two.  Her Uncle Mike, a Catholic priest convinced the court and his superiors that he is the only option to take care of her, and they allowed it.  Lizzy had a great childhood with him for about 8 years.  He was a wonderful foster father for her despite having no role models for how to handle various situations as he has no nieces or nephew and their parents to guide him.  His housekeeper had opinions but was not a mother herself and he didn’t appreciate most of her suggestions.  He ddid make friends with a neighbor woman who has a child the same age as Lizzy and he sought guidance from her at times.  When Lizzy was nine, the housekeeper reports two incidents she witnessed that suggest child abuse and she is taken from him.  Uncle Mike’s sister took her in for a short while (yes there actually was an aunt but she didn’t want to take on raising a little girl while she had her hands full with several young sons of her own), only long enough to ship her to a boarding school.   When Lizzy asked her aunt about Uncle Mike, the aunt informed her that he died of a heart attack—heart conditions ran in their family.  So three times within nine years she was left quite alone in the world. 

After college, she returned as a high school counselor to the town where she spent the happy part of her childhood.  Her husband agreed to live in this town, but he really wanted to return to city life.  They argued frequently about this conflict and Lizzy also suspected he might be having an affair.  Since their last argument had driven Lizzy to take that fateful run, he felt somewhat obligated to stay with her.  He worried that she is losing it when she describes a visitation from Uncle Mike while she was in the coma despite knowing that he died shortly after their separation.

The story moves back and forth in time and between the voice of Lizzy and the voice of Uncle Mike.  It’s got some very interesting twists that I won’t reveal.

This reader thinks this has lots to offer a book discussion group.  The characters all have secrets and all have made a number of fateful decisions over time.  Did they make the right decisions? 

Bravo, Monica Wood, for another great read.

Louise Penny books in order of publication:

Book                                                 Published                        Read

Still Life                                          2005                                  July 2024

A Fatal Grace                               2006                                  May 2025

The Cruelest Month                  2007                                  May 2025

The Brutal Telling                     2008                                  June 2025

A Rule Against Murder            2009                                  May 2025

Bury Your Dead                          2010                                  June 2025

A Trick of Light                           2011                                  June 2025

The Beautiful Mystery              2012                                  June 2025

How the Light Gets In              2013                                  June 2025

The Long Way Home                2014                                  July 2025

The Nature of the Beast          2015                                  July 2025

A Great Reckoning                    2016                                  July 2025

Glass Houses                              2017                                  July 2025

Kingdom of the Beast             2018                                  July 2025

A Better Man                               2019                                  July 2025

All the Devils are Here            2020                                  Aug 2025

The Madness of Crowds        2021                                  Aug 2025

A World of Curiosities            2022                                  Aug 2025

The Grey Wolf                            2024                                  soon

The Red Wolf                            coming in 2025            not yet!

If you take a look at when these books were read, you will notice two things:  nearly a year between reading the first book and the second; and then the following 17 books in 4 months.  Why?

This reader read the first book just before discovering the Colin Cotterill books which set off a binging of all available Dr Suri books.  This reader later looked up Louise Penny books as they are set in Quebec, the destination of this reader’s bike trip planned for June 2025.  Why not read a book set near where this reader was headed?  And so, this reader became thoroughly hooked.

Why?  Several reasons. 

Availability: This reader read the entire series as audiobooks available through her library’s Hoopla service.  So, it was easy to get the next book in the series immediately after finishing one regardless of day or time. 

Great Readers: The same wonderful reader, Ralph Cosham, read books 1-10.  It is quite wonderful to hear recurring characters’ voices sound the same in each book.  Ralph Cosham unfortunately died too early, and Louise Penny was faced with shifting her readers to a new reader for her audiobooks.  She describes the reason for the change and the process she used to select a new reader, Robert Bathurst.  Since the lead character learned English primarily in London and speaks with a slightly British accent, Robert Bathurst being British worked for this reader, especially with the help of Louise Penny’s discussion of the change.   Louise Penny again shifts readers starting with the 2024 book and moving forward choosing a Quebec native.   The 2024 book wasn’t in this reader’s Hoopla library which frankly enabled this reader to take a pause and read something else!   But this reader will certainly read both the 2024 and 2025 books soon (2025 book not yet published!)

What else?  So, availability and great readers are nice but obviously it’s the writing—the characters, the stories, and the language that makes a series truly bingeworthy.

Characters and Place: Penny has developed a set of characters who reside in Three Pines, a small hamlet in the Eastern Townships of Quebec that is not on any map.  All the Three Pines books noted above involve the village of Three Pines in some way and most of the recurring characters play some role.  Over the course of the books, some of the roles change so those listed are the roles initially in the series. 

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the lead character, is head of the homicide division of the Surte du Quebec. 

Jean-Guy Beauvoir:  second-in-command to Gamache

Isabelle LaCoaste:  critical member of Gamache’s team 

Reine Marie Gamache: Armand’s wife and retired lead archivist for the National archives housed in Montreal. 

Clara and Peter Morrow: Three Pines residents; artists

Ruth: Three Pines resident; nationally recognized poet; she adopts a baby duck, Rose who becomes a constant companion.

Myrna: Three Pines resident; retired psychologist who now runs a used and new bookstore and lives in the loft above the store

Olivier: owner of the Three Pines Bistro

Gabri:  Olivier’s partner and operator of the Tree Pines B&B

And there are others including the Gamache’s children and pets.

Armand and Reine Marie remain in love after a few decades of marriage.  It’s interesting to this author that this series and the Dr Siri series have a protagonist who has remained in love with his wife and married to her throughout a long career (although Dr Siri’s wife has died before the series starts).  This is in contrast with many drama series this reader watches on TV in which the lead detective is divorced and often estranged from his children or their marriage is dissolving. 

And The Stories

There is some sort of mystery in each book although sometimes it takes awhile to show up.  Similarly with murder—there is usually one but sometimes it occurs late in the book.  But Gamache is always dealing with something be it solving a murder, convincing others that a seemingly natural death is a murder, tracking down a friend’s husband, protecting a speaker whose message he finds disturbing, seeking to clear corruption from the Surte’s academy, etc.  Penny brings contemporary topics into the stories—the Covid pandemic, opioid addition, fentanyl trafficking, eugenics, impact of the internet, and more.  There is some movement of the story arc of Gamache and his friends and family as well in each book.  In some books, the personal story is at least the initial primary story but, in those cases, there is a story that weaves in that involves a criminal act. 

Penny’s writing is compelling.  Her books seem to move slowly at times, but many times the actual timeframe covered slowly is happening over only a few days.  The slowness arises from absorbing descriptions of the surrounding landscape or from revealing the thoughts of one of the characters.  We are privy mostly to Gamache’s thoughts and feelings but at times we hear those of others, most usually his second in command, Jean-Guy, or of Isabelle LaCoaste, another team member. At other times the action she is describing is quite intense and this reader found herself closing the book for a few minutes to rest before continuing. 

Throughout the series the reader is reminded frequently (but not too frequently) of Gamache’s virtues, including his willingness to take a chance on police personnel that others aren’t (Jean-Guy, Isabelle are two examples), his commitment to the Surte’s motto: Service, Integrity, Justice, and his kindness. 

While a reader can start with any book in this series, it’s worth starting at the beginning and moving through the series so that the evolution of the characters and their relationships can be most fully appreciated.   This reader is glad she found the series long after it began so that she wasn’t confronted with having to wait for new entries to be published until now.  This reader is about to join the large number of Louise Penny enthusiasts’ wait for new additions to this excellent series. 

Demon Copperhead

By Barbara Kingsolver

Published 2022

Read Aug 2023

This reader has not always been a fan of Barbara Kingsolver.  While her stories have been interesting, her novels have sometimes felt like a lecture, not unlike the feeling this author gets from Wendall Barry novels.  Hence this reader was a bit reluctant to invest in this novel as it’s a reasonably long one at 560 pages. 

This reader started this novel via an audiobook but was not sure the southern accent of the reader was something this reader wanted to endure.  So an e-book was obtained, and reading was restarted.  This reader eventually got used to the southern accent and moved seamlessly between  the audiobook and the e-book.

There is much comparison elsewhere about the clearly planned parallels with Dicken’s David Copperfield with respect to characters and types of challenges the narrator faces and will leave to others to discuss them in detail.  The primary one of interest to this reader is that both narrators end up orphaned and must endure growing up in the face of the challenges poised by the society of the times.  In this case, one huge challenge was the quagmire faced by many thrown into the foster childcare program of their local county.  In Demon’s case (using his nickname), his stepfather’s unexplained views of the family next door to Demon and his mother combined with their own strained resources and energy meant that Demond is forced into the foster childcare program.  His foster parents are not unlike many—the payment they receive in return for housing the child is a significant portion of their income.  In addition, Demon’s foster parents also rely on him for additional financial support either via his physical labor on their farm or by working outside the home and garnishing his wages.  His case workers’ very heavy caseloads are also not uncommon.

The novel is very engaging although at times heartbreaking.  The reader will hope that his football injury doesn’t lead to opiate addiction.  The reader will hope his relationship with a very troubled girl won’t lead to more difficulties for him.  This reader hoped that since Demon is the narrator, the book wouldn’t be finished by someone else relaying information of his death. 

An interesting aspect of the novel is the distinctions Demon sees between life in his rural community vs life in the big city where his neighbors’ daughter lives.  His neighbors take Demon and their grandson to see their daughter, June Peggot, and her niece, Emmy, where they stay for about a week (during which time Demon’s mother marries his stepfather who turns abusive shortly after the wedding).  The lack of the ability to grow your own vegetables and to just go outside easily are quite noteworthy to Demon.  June, an RN, and Emmy return to Lee County both to enjoy those attributes and to be away from a prejudicial environment against “country hicks”. 

This book is very engaging and generally free from the lecturing tone this reader experienced in some other of Kingsolver’s works.  As someone raised in a rural/small town county, this reader found her depiction of foster childcare was believable, her comments about country vs city lifestyles were appropriate and were not judgmental, and her general depiction of rural/small town life was accurate  .  The devastation of the opiate and general drug crisis, especially in this region of the country, was well described and again non-judgmental or exploitative. 

This reader’s book club found much to discuss and ran out of time to cover all the possible points to discuss.  Since this club meets for 2.5 hours, that’s something.

Lucy by the Sea

By Elizabeth Strout

Published 2022

Read March 2023

By now you may be aware that this reader reads everything by Elizabeth Strout.  This essay’s posting date so long after its reading shouldn’t imply any negative connotations about this reader’s opinion of it—merely the usual problem of reading faster than the essays get written.

This novel continues our interaction with Lucy Barton.  She first appeared in My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) then in Anything is Possible (2017) and again in Oh William(2021).  Now we see Lucy Barton about 20 years after her divorce from Wiliam, her first husband of about 20 years, as a fairly newly widowed from her second husband, whom she adored, and at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.  William, divorced from his second wife, is a scientist and sees the writing on the wall regarding this new disease.  He convinces Lucy to go to a house he rented in Maine.  She’s reluctant to leave her beloved New York where her children reside.  She plans to take only her iPad, despite being a writer by occupation.  William packs her laptop as he knows this isn’t going to be as short a stay as Lucy imagines.

They settle into this rented house which is near Crosby, Maine, a town Strout readers have visited in other books.  In fact, their house is pretty near Bob Burgess’s place and Lucy and Bob become walking friends.  Other past characters have cameo appearances but reading any of the previous Strout books is unnecessary to appreciate this novel.

This book is definitely about the Covid-19 pandemic—how people approached it, their fears, their reaction to being cooped up in their homes, their longings for family and friends they aren’t seeing, etc.  But it also is a book like other Strout books—about relationships.  In this one, it’s about Lucy mourning her husband David, finding a new friend in Bob Burgess, worrying about her grown kids, and sharing living quarters with an ex-husband. 

It’s classic Elizabeth Strout and this reader enjoyed every word of it. 

The Dark Forest

By Cixin Lui

Translated by Joel Martinsen

Published 2008 (China); 2015 (US)

Read April 2024

Death’s End

By Cixin Lui

Translated by Ken Lui

Published 2010 (China); 2016 (US)

Read Nov 2024

These two books complete the trilogy known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Cixin Lui which began with The 3 Body Problem which this reader has previously discussed.  This reader found each book in the trilogy to be extremely remarkable.  In addition to being great “hard core” science fiction, these books challenge the reader to confront the Fermi paradox and a possible solution to it—the dark forest hypothesis.  The Fermi paradox is essentially the unanswered question “where are they?”  Shouldn’t we expect there to be life elsewhere in the universe?  Then why isn’t there evidence that it exists? 

The 3 Body Problem provides the story of the search for life elsewhere in the universe that, due to somewhat rouge efforts of one scientist, both receives contact from another civilization (Trisolaran) and responds to that contact which sets up a series of events that puts life on earth at peril.  The foreign civilization wants to conquer Earth and use it for its own.

The Dark Forest provides the story of attempts to deal with the Trisolaran threat.  The Trisolaran’s superior technology includes “sophrons” that see and hear everything on Earth and block Earth’s progression of their own understanding of physics.  A “Wallfacer” project is initiated:  4 people are chosen to develop strategies to overcome the threat of Trisolaran.  They are given nearly unlimited resources to accomplish this.  The Trisolarans try to upset this project by selecting “Wallbreakers” that pair to the Wallfacers with the goal of revealing their strategies thus making them useless.  Three of Wallbreakers are successful.  The fourth Wallfacer, Lui Ji, develops the dark forest hypothesis — that there are many civilizations throughout the universe that are silent and hostile; remaining silent protects them from the other hostile civilizations.  After some plot twists and thrilling scenes not described here, Lui Ji is able to convince the Trisolarans to enter a truce to prevent their own civilization from exposure to other hostile civilizations—a Mutually Assured Deterrence approach . 

Death’s End covers a truly remarkable range of time as Earth continues to seek a path of avoiding death of their civilization by a series of approaches.  In an early section of the novel, Cheng Xin is an astrophysicist who works on the Staircase Project that is recounted in the Netflix series of the 3 Body Problem, discussed previously.  When the Lui Ji steps down as the human linchpin that has kept the Mutually Assured Deterrence approach keeping the Trisolarans at bay, that approach falls apart and a new era begins.  This reader won’t detail the numerous things that occur in this new era and beyond but Cheng  Xi  and Thomas Wade, the CIA agent leading the Staircase Project, are involved in most of them enabled by the hibernation technology introduced to us first in The Dark Forest. 

This reader was impressed by the author’s ability to thrill science fiction readers with impressive technical details of technologies that seem plausible while futuristic.  But the author accomplishes far more than that.  The substantial philosophical questions posed by the stories are quite profound and he uses credible characters to bring these questions to life.   Wallfacer Liu Ji’s relationship with his enforced role as a Wallfacer is exquisitely told—his initial rejection, the transition period, developing a useful strategy, the courage to execute it and endure early criticism, and the fortitude to carry out the deterrence mission.  Similarly, the author effectively uses the character of Cheng Xin in a believable way so that the reader experiences her feelings as she progresses through her essentially solitary life, driving potential solutions to enable the survival of Earth, and making decisions that likely impact the fate of it. 

This word “Wow” leapt to this reader’s mind over and over.  Great characters, immense questions, exceptional technical details, and incredible effectiveness in taking the reader literally billions of years into the future.  The relationship this reader has with the universe has been altered as a result of reading this remarkable trilogy.  

Yellowface

By R.F. Kuang

Published 2023

Read Dec 2024

This reader finished the first third of this book in one setting—apparently it was engaging.  The narrator is a white author in her twenties whose first novel was published, but it didn’t sell many copies. In contrast, a Yale classmate, Athena, achieved the success our narrator craves.  It’s clear in the first few pages that the narrator is jealous of her success.

The two have remained in contact since graduating but the narrator isn’t sure they are actually friends, but rather acquaintances who both ended up living in the Washington DC area.  However, one night after celebrating Athena’s deal with Netflix, they end up at Athena’s apartment (the narrator’s first time there).  On a trip to the bathroom, the narrator sneaks a peak at Athena’s writing room and finds a stack of paper with “the end” on the top page.  Athena suggests she read a bit of it, but they are both pretty drunk and leave the book behind.  They make pancakes and Athena suffocates when a partially baked pancake gets stuck in her throat.  Eventually the narrator is allowed to go home when the EMT’s are leaving.  Amazingly, the narrator takes the draft home with her and starts playing with it, first “as a lark”, and then seriously.  She makes an active decision to submit it to her agent as her own work.  She knows she’s minimally plagiarized and probably stolen but she is very convinced her efforts to refine the book make it ok to hide Athena’s involvement in the project.  The agent puts it out for auction and gets her a deal with a substantial advance.  

The publisher she sold the book to is an indie house where she’s a “big fish in a small pond”.  The author describes the path of the book and its presumed author through the pre-publication process after the publisher decides it’s going to be a major hit.  She has a great relationship with her editor, Daniella.  She is giddy that some of Daniella’s favorite passages are ones the narrator wrote herself—this proving to the narrator that she can really write. 

The book is expected to be a major hit given its topic, so much attention is paid to how to market it.  During the marketing planning, the questions of “cultural authenticity” comes up—can a white author write about this topic—the story of Chinese laborers during World War I (Athena was Chinese American so probably wouldn’t get this question).  An editorial assistant, Candice, suggests a sensitivity reader to provide cultural consulting to ensure there aren’t any “bumps” post-launch.  The narrator believes Candice doesn’t like her and insists this isn’t necessary as she’s done her homework.  The publishing team ends up supporting the narrator and Candice is removed from the project which continues ahead with lots of pre-publication marketing.  To soften the narrator’s whiteness a bit, the book will be published under the name Juniper Song vs June Hayward, her actual last name and the name used when publishing her first book.  Song is her middle name but might be mistaken for a Chinese name.  There is even an article put out about authorial identities and pen names to get ahead of any issues.  She feels fine that they aren’t lying or committing any fraud.  The narrator is head over heels in love with the attention she and the book are getting and that’s she’s “made it” in the publishing world.  She’s getting to taste the various perks saw Athena enjoy.

The book hits the market and climbs the best-seller list.  The narrator is thrilled and revels in all the positive tweets she’s getting on twitter.  But then some negative tweets show up including the question of whether a white author can adequately tell this story, whether the author is trying to pretend to the market she is Asian, and ultimately there are questions about whether she is really the author vs Athena.  Our narrator assures her publisher that she is the legitimate author, and they take her at her word.

As the book progresses, the narrator gets completely consumed with social media which diverts her from starting a new project.  She realizes she doesn’t have any ideas for what to do next.  She takes an idea she gets from a paragraph she finds in some other papers she has from Athena and uses the paragraph verbatim.  Of course, this causes her more problems on social media after this comes to like post-publication.  This reader will leave the plot line at this point. 

This reader had several reactions to this book:

As indicated, the first third was extremely engaging.  This reader was excited to learn about the pre-publication process.  But it also became clear that some books are chosen to be heavily promoted while others aren’t. Questions this drove for the reader include:  What’s the criteria? Was this book so wonderful that it deserved this attention or was the “diversity” topic driving the marketing?  

There have been some authors trashed for writing “outside their lanes” — generally when white authors write about non-white people and situations and generally when the authors are women.  Why are we having this conversation?  Many books have editorial issues and maybe we wish all authors/editors to be more careful and complete.  The “sensitivity reader” may be a very useful editorial tool.  Certainly, many authors already use many readers in addition to their official editorial staff to help them hone their work and those that choose readers that will give them honest feedback are likely the most successful. 

The narrator justifies her actions of stealing from Athena repeatedly and convinces her agent and publisher that she is the author.  This reader was astonished by this but of course it makes for a good story.

Is June Hayward the good writer she thinks she is?  She spends essentially no time writing anything while she’s promoting the book (maybe that’s normal) or after the book tours and talks, etc have ended and can’t get herself away from social media.   She needs to directly steal Athena’s words for her next book and once again thinks this is ok. 

Why does the narrator want to be a writer?  She is very clear that she relished the attention, the money, and the social media reaction to her book and was saddened that it wasn’t going to last.  Of course, we all want some validation that the work we’re doing is valuable to something or someone. Making a living at writing or any other type of art is certainly not for the faint of heart and requires inner strength that transcends the need for constant external accolades.  Frankly, that’s true for most people to get through the rough spots of their jobs.

This reader has noted in several posts that she looks forward to the next book by author X and that she reads books from author Y as soon as she can.  Some of these writers, such as Ann Patchett, have very different story lines/characters/etc for each of her books.  This reader finds this impressive and something that makes this author fresh each time.  One of these writers, Elizabeth Strout, could be accused of recycling her characters, but the stories she weaves about them draw this reader “to that flame” readily to learn what Elizabeth Strout is going to tell us about past and new characters.  Thus, these authors may have something that the narrator of this book doesn’t have that allows them to keep producing works that draw a large audience.  This reader isn’t qualified to say exactly what or why this is—which this reader finds fascinating.    

In the end, this reader found Yellowface to be a book worth discussing with others.  One doesn’t need to like the protagonist to be engaged.