12/15/00

A Review of Wendy Tokunaga's No Kidding

It seems to me that book reviews must often be a very frustrating and one-sided experience for authors. A reviewer writes a whole lot of stuff about a book and the author has no chance to say, "Hey! You got that all wrong!" or "Yes, but the reason I did it like that is because ....."

The Internet has brought change and the possibility of yet more change to many aspects of our lives, not least of all to book publishing and book reviewing. Wendyand I both have access to email and I thought that instead of the usual review, that I would prefer to frame this as a discussion with Wendy about her book:

Moira - Wendy, your protagonist is a woman who is reluctant to have children of her own. This is a subject that I've not seen broached in fiction before. Did you feel that you were breaking new ground? And if so, did it affect your treatment of the subject matter at all?

Wendy - Yes, I feel that this subject has not been broached but I wrote this book from the heart and that didn't really affect my treatment of the subject. In other words, it wasn't a calculated treatment of the subject.

Moira - You felt strongly that it was time for women, who choose to not have kids, to be heard? Or given a fair hearing?

Wendy- Both!

Moira - I had very ambivalent feelings towards your principle characters, never enough to lose sympathy with them entirely, but enough to get annoyed with them a lot of the time. Was there a particular reason you chose to portray them like this?

Wendy - I'd have to know exactly what you were annoyed about. :-) Most feedback I get is that people relate to Audrey and her weaknesses and love Aldo. They do have their foibles that make them sympathetic, I believe.

Moira - I guess Audrey annoyed me a lot of the time because of her "pleaser" personality. I know that is one of the primary issues you wanted to address in No Kidding, but it is very challenging for readers to be confronted with their own worst mistakes. :-)

Wendy - Yes, I know it's tricky to put a character like that in a book. I tried very hard to make her sympathetic and not too much of a doormat. She's basically a very together woman except for trying to deal with her mother.

Moira - I am fascinated with the employment issues that beset Audrey Mills and her co-workers. In South Africa, RandallSoft would have fallen so foul of the employment equity legislation, that it would have been spending more time defending law suits, than writing software! Are U.S. employers really able to get away with such treatment of their employees?

Wendy - I drew from some of my own experience working for a software company about six years ago, but I believe that there have been landmark cases against employers recently, so things may be changing now. I didn't really intend to tackle this issue too much, other than as a backstory that is realistic.

Moira - The grammar and editing in your book would have had Messrs Strunk and White haul out their pencils and fill the margins with red marks. I've noticed that the rise of the Internet has brought everyday reading and writing to many people who would not otherwise have bothered to do either. These people, in turn, seem to have wrought changes to the written word. Writing on the Internet is very informal, colloquial and inventive, and on reading your book, it seems to me that this style is permeating the printed word too. I'd like your comments?

Wendy - My book was professionally edited by two Editors. I have worked in an editorial capacity before and know that many people have different ideas about style and grammar and some are more anal about it than others. :-)

Moira - I understand that No Kidding is published as a print-on-demand book?

Wendy - Yes, it's a new publishing model where the publisher only prints the books that are ordered. There is no first print-run so there are no remainders.

Moira - Wendy, I enjoyed your book and it has been a privilege and a pleasure for me to discuss it with you. I read elsewhere that you have a new novel in the pipeline, something dealing with modern Japanese culture?

Wendy - Yes, my next novel will deal a lot with my love/hate relationship with Japan, a fascinating country that I have lived in and visited over 20 times. It will also address cross-cultural issues, including Americans who love Japan for its rich culture and rituals and Japanese who want to get away from the oppressive society of their home country and trade it for a lifestyle in the United States.

Check out more about this book, including reviews and author information, at the
No Kidding Website.