The book is a brief, acute meditation on the agony and ecstasy of writers, the insecurity that goes with the act of turning author and the imperatives of the publishing industry. All of this shelters under a zinger of a story: June (Juniper) Song Hayward, a less-than-successful writer, resentfully lurking in the shadow of her wildly famous author friend, Athena Liu, grabs a chance to make off with the latter’s unfinished manuscript in the most macabre of circumstances.
What’s more? She has the temerity to pass it off as her own, get it published, and then bask in the huge backwash of approval it garners. As expected, given that Liu was a bestselling author, with sales success, excellent reviews, promotion platforms galore, and
a glittering halo is achieved, literally overnight, by June.
The reader, however, knows that nemesis can’t be far behind this plagiarist. And when the house of cards that she builds, frantically comes tumbling down, it isn’t surprising. Strangely though, it is dismaying. June constantly reminds the reader that she has rewritten large parts of Athena’s war novel, convincing herself, in the process, that it’s an almost original manuscript she submitted to the publishers. Her conscience seems to be a wispy thing at best, and it is darkly funny when she says she has worked “damn hard” on Athena’s story, from dawn till past midnight, for weeks. “It’s not like I took a painting and passed it off as my own,” she states. “I inherited a sketch and finished it according to the style of the original.”
Told in first person, June’s imposter tale actually is studded with moments when the reader draws in
a sharp breath at the effrontery, the twisted tactics employed by June in her quest for fame. Soon enough, she’s calling her act of literary theft a “collab”.
That is, however, merely the pivot for a story that touches on the downsides of a writer’s life––the long, and sometimes futile, wait for recognition; the many slights one faces from literary agents, publishers and editors; and the relentless cycles of promotions. Alongside this is the urgent requirement of a thick skin in the days of internet trolling, since one is bound to rouse random people’s ire and derision, which they will immediately dump on social media.
Add to this, the already toxic mix of two vital factors––one, June’s secret, that it is not a story she wrote. And two, the fact that the story could well be seen as an act of cultural appropriation: June is white, and Athena, the deceased writer of the original manuscript about Chinese chain gangs of labourers employed by the Allies in World War I, is Asian. Thereafter, the brew becomes a murky one, which we are sure will bring down all concerned: the purloiner, her literary agent, and publisher. Yet, there is such sleight of hand employed at the end that we cannot help but laugh helplessly.
Kuang has June saying that jealousy in the writer’s world is actually the sharp pang of fear that one can’t be as good as the person one is envious of; that social media isn’t unimportant to writers because it is the realm that the social economy of publishing exists on. Yet, here’s the thing, June knows how to ride out social media storms with patience, gritting her teeth at times, and firefighting like mad at other times.
Told in a chatty style––full of excuses for her own behaviour, a tendency to whine, and many flashes of a victim complex––the author owns the voice of the protagonist. Steeped in cynicism, it is actually a morality lesson for our times––a wicked tale, both in the old-fashioned as well as the contemporary meaning of the word.