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Woman with a Blue Pencil
What becomes of a character cut from a writer’s working manuscript?
On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American academic, has been thrust into the role of amateur P.I., investigating his wife’s murder, which has been largely ignored by the LAPD. Grief stricken by her loss, disoriented by his ill-prepared change of occupation, the worst is yet to come. Sam discovers that, inexplicably, he has become not only unrecognizable to his former acquaintances but that all signs of his existence (including the murder he’s investigating) have been erased. Unaware that he is a discarded, fictional creation, he resumes his investigation in a world now characterized not only by his own sense of isolation but by wartime fear.
Meanwhile, Sam’s story is interspersed with chapters from a pulp spy novel that features an L.A.-based Korean P.I. with jingoistic and anti-Japanese, post-December 7th attitudes – the revised, politically and commercially viable character for whom Sumida has been excised.
Behind it all is the ambitious, 20-year-old Nisei author who has made the changes, despite the relocation of himself and his family to a Japanese internment camp. And, looming above, is his book editor in New York who serves as both muse and manipulator to the young author—the woman with the blue pencil, a new kind of femme fatale.
On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American academic, has been thrust into the role of amateur P.I., investigating his wife’s murder, which has been largely ignored by the LAPD. Grief stricken by her loss, disoriented by his ill-prepared change of occupation, the worst is yet to come. Sam discovers that, inexplicably, he has become not only unrecognizable to his former acquaintances but that all signs of his existence (including the murder he’s investigating) have been erased. Unaware that he is a discarded, fictional creation, he resumes his investigation in a world now characterized not only by his own sense of isolation but by wartime fear.
Meanwhile, Sam’s story is interspersed with chapters from a pulp spy novel that features an L.A.-based Korean P.I. with jingoistic and anti-Japanese, post-December 7th attitudes – the revised, politically and commercially viable character for whom Sumida has been excised.
Behind it all is the ambitious, 20-year-old Nisei author who has made the changes, despite the relocation of himself and his family to a Japanese internment camp. And, looming above, is his book editor in New York who serves as both muse and manipulator to the young author—the woman with the blue pencil, a new kind of femme fatale.
191 pages, Paperback
First published November 10, 2015
56 people are currently reading
1046 people want to read
About the author
Gordon McAlpine
32 books95 followersGordon McAlpine (who sometimes writes as “Owen Fitzstephen”) is the author of Mystery Box (2003), Hammett Unwritten (2013), Woman With a Blue Pencil (2015), Holmes Untangled (2018), and After Oz (2024) –- all shape-shifting novels that play fast and loose with the mystery genre, as well as a middle-grade trilogy, The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe. He’s also the co-author of the non-fiction book The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH. He has taught creative writing and literature at U.C. Irvine, U.C.L.A., and Chapman University. He lives with his wife Julie in Southern California. “Owen Fitzstephen,” by the way, is the name of a character, a dissolute, alcoholic writer, in Hammett’s The Dain Curse.
Gordon McAlpine has been described by Publisher’s Weekly as “a gifted stylist, with clean, clear and muscular prose.” A native Californian, he attended the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of California, Irvine.
Once Upon a Midnight Eerie is Mr. McAlpine’s latest book and is the the second volume in his middle-grade trilogy, “The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe”. Publisher’s Weekly describes the book as a “gumbo of jokes, codes, treasure, history, mystery and assorted literary references.” It was published by Viking in April, 2014.
The Tell-Tale Start, published in 2013, is the first book in “The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe”. Publisher’s Weekly writes in a starred review of the award winning audio version of The Tell-Tale Start: “Entertaining and original….Endlessly fun and ultimately very satisfying on every level.”
In February 2013, Seventh Street Books published Hammett Unwritten, a literary mystery novel that revolves around the life of the great detective novelist Dashiell Hammett. Reviews of the novel have been stellar and the novel has appeared on top ten lists for the year.
The Los Angeles Times called Mr. McAlpine’s first novel, Joy in Mudville, an “imaginative mix of history, humor and fantasy…fanciful and surprising”, and The West Coast Review of Books called it “a minor miracle.” Joy in Mudville was re-released in a new e-book edition in late summer 2012.
The Way of Baseball, Finding Stillness at 95 MPH, is a non fiction book and was published by Simon & Schuster in June 2011 to outstanding reviews. Written in collaboration with Major League All-Star Shawn Green, the book illuminates the spiritual practices that enabled Green to “bring stillness into the flow of life.”
The Persistence of Memory, his second novel, was published by the distinguished British publisher Peter Owen Ltd., and his young adult novel, Mystery Box, was published by Cricket Books to critical praise.
Mr. McAlpine has published short stories and book reviews in journals and anthologies both in the U.S.A and abroad. His short story “The Happiest Place” appears in the Akashic Press anthology, Orange County Noir. He has chaired and taught creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts Program at Chapman University in Orange, California, as well as fiction writing classes at U.C.L.A and U.C. Irvine. In his twenties, he developed video games and wrote scripts for film and television.
He is a member of the Author’s Guild and PEN, and he is president of the board of directors of the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation. He lives with his wife Julie in Southern California.
Gordon McAlpine has been described by Publisher’s Weekly as “a gifted stylist, with clean, clear and muscular prose.” A native Californian, he attended the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of California, Irvine.
Once Upon a Midnight Eerie is Mr. McAlpine’s latest book and is the the second volume in his middle-grade trilogy, “The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe”. Publisher’s Weekly describes the book as a “gumbo of jokes, codes, treasure, history, mystery and assorted literary references.” It was published by Viking in April, 2014.
The Tell-Tale Start, published in 2013, is the first book in “The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe”. Publisher’s Weekly writes in a starred review of the award winning audio version of The Tell-Tale Start: “Entertaining and original….Endlessly fun and ultimately very satisfying on every level.”
In February 2013, Seventh Street Books published Hammett Unwritten, a literary mystery novel that revolves around the life of the great detective novelist Dashiell Hammett. Reviews of the novel have been stellar and the novel has appeared on top ten lists for the year.
The Los Angeles Times called Mr. McAlpine’s first novel, Joy in Mudville, an “imaginative mix of history, humor and fantasy…fanciful and surprising”, and The West Coast Review of Books called it “a minor miracle.” Joy in Mudville was re-released in a new e-book edition in late summer 2012.
The Way of Baseball, Finding Stillness at 95 MPH, is a non fiction book and was published by Simon & Schuster in June 2011 to outstanding reviews. Written in collaboration with Major League All-Star Shawn Green, the book illuminates the spiritual practices that enabled Green to “bring stillness into the flow of life.”
The Persistence of Memory, his second novel, was published by the distinguished British publisher Peter Owen Ltd., and his young adult novel, Mystery Box, was published by Cricket Books to critical praise.
Mr. McAlpine has published short stories and book reviews in journals and anthologies both in the U.S.A and abroad. His short story “The Happiest Place” appears in the Akashic Press anthology, Orange County Noir. He has chaired and taught creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts Program at Chapman University in Orange, California, as well as fiction writing classes at U.C.L.A and U.C. Irvine. In his twenties, he developed video games and wrote scripts for film and television.
He is a member of the Author’s Guild and PEN, and he is president of the board of directors of the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation. He lives with his wife Julie in Southern California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews
June 14, 2016
Not too long ago, I saw an absurdist metatheatrical play entitled Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, loosely about six unfinished characters who interrupt a theater rehearsal in search of a playwright to complete their story.
The theme was intriguing and here, Gordan McAlpine mines a similar theme: what happens when characters are excised from the universe and “dropped back into some variation of it where (they) never existed.” This is but one of the fascinating subplots of this metafictional novel.
A promising debut author, Takumi Sato, is forced to revise his mystery novel, which focuses on a Japanese protagonist after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The woman with the blue pencil – his intrepid editor, Maxine Wakefield, encourages him to tap into the jingoistic spirit of the country with plot revisions. The irony is that American-born Takumi has been dislocated into an internment camp, a direct target of America’s xenophobic attitude. Takumi Sato eliminates his former character, Japanese amateur PI Sam Samida, replacing him with a Korean character named Jimmy Park, and off it goes.
The parallel stories – that of Takumi and his editor, his erased and untethered character Sam Samida, and his characters fictional replacement, Jimmy Park all function in the same universe as the story seamlessly moves back and forth. Different readers will tap into different strands—the abhorrent treatment of Japanese-American citizens during the war, conventional mystery, the metaphysical pondering about whether a character assumes his own life once created, and perhaps most significantly, what a writer is forced to endure to create a commercially successful work. The fact that Gordan McAlpine accomplishes all this in 185 pages – and does it well – is remarkable.
The theme was intriguing and here, Gordan McAlpine mines a similar theme: what happens when characters are excised from the universe and “dropped back into some variation of it where (they) never existed.” This is but one of the fascinating subplots of this metafictional novel.
A promising debut author, Takumi Sato, is forced to revise his mystery novel, which focuses on a Japanese protagonist after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The woman with the blue pencil – his intrepid editor, Maxine Wakefield, encourages him to tap into the jingoistic spirit of the country with plot revisions. The irony is that American-born Takumi has been dislocated into an internment camp, a direct target of America’s xenophobic attitude. Takumi Sato eliminates his former character, Japanese amateur PI Sam Samida, replacing him with a Korean character named Jimmy Park, and off it goes.
The parallel stories – that of Takumi and his editor, his erased and untethered character Sam Samida, and his characters fictional replacement, Jimmy Park all function in the same universe as the story seamlessly moves back and forth. Different readers will tap into different strands—the abhorrent treatment of Japanese-American citizens during the war, conventional mystery, the metaphysical pondering about whether a character assumes his own life once created, and perhaps most significantly, what a writer is forced to endure to create a commercially successful work. The fact that Gordan McAlpine accomplishes all this in 185 pages – and does it well – is remarkable.
January 26, 2016
This was an excellent little book with a unique story line.
American born Takumi Sato is writing his first novel, a crime novel featuring an American born Japanese, Sam Sumida who has given up his academic job to track down the killer of his wife Kyoko. Unfortunately his timing is lousy as Pearl Harbour is bombed and America enters the war. Takumi's editor (the woman with the blue pencil) recommends that he write a more pro-American novel and abandon his Japanese character and change the storyline to that of an anti-Japanese PI hunting down a Japanese spy ring.
Takumi takes her advice and takes on a more American nom de plume and what follows is a series of extracts from his re-worked novel with intermittent letters of advice from his editor as she advises (or manipulates?) him into writing the sort of novel she thinks will sell in the current anti-Japanese climate. However Takumi, now in a Japanese internment camp, is not willing to let his original novel or characters die. He continues to revise his original story, even though his characters find they no longer have a past or any evidence of their existence, placing it in the same world as his spy story so that the two become interwoven.
Although the two stories are not particularly original in their own right, this novel works so well on many levels. As well as presenting us with the amusing idea of what happens to characters cut from an author's work, it more seriously highlights the treatment of American Japanese citizens during WW2. On one level it also raises the issue of how much an editor should advise an author on the direction and political correctness of their work and on another level perhaps how history is ofter rewritten or re-interpreted to suit the observer. An interesting and thought provoking read! 4.5★
American born Takumi Sato is writing his first novel, a crime novel featuring an American born Japanese, Sam Sumida who has given up his academic job to track down the killer of his wife Kyoko. Unfortunately his timing is lousy as Pearl Harbour is bombed and America enters the war. Takumi's editor (the woman with the blue pencil) recommends that he write a more pro-American novel and abandon his Japanese character and change the storyline to that of an anti-Japanese PI hunting down a Japanese spy ring.
Takumi takes her advice and takes on a more American nom de plume and what follows is a series of extracts from his re-worked novel with intermittent letters of advice from his editor as she advises (or manipulates?) him into writing the sort of novel she thinks will sell in the current anti-Japanese climate. However Takumi, now in a Japanese internment camp, is not willing to let his original novel or characters die. He continues to revise his original story, even though his characters find they no longer have a past or any evidence of their existence, placing it in the same world as his spy story so that the two become interwoven.
Although the two stories are not particularly original in their own right, this novel works so well on many levels. As well as presenting us with the amusing idea of what happens to characters cut from an author's work, it more seriously highlights the treatment of American Japanese citizens during WW2. On one level it also raises the issue of how much an editor should advise an author on the direction and political correctness of their work and on another level perhaps how history is ofter rewritten or re-interpreted to suit the observer. An interesting and thought provoking read! 4.5★
May 21, 2021
"Yazar bir roman taslağını yarım bıraktığında içindeki karakterlere ne olur?" sorusundan yola çıkarak yazılmış harika bir kitap Romanından Kaçan Kahraman. Kitapta anlatı üç koldan ilerliyor: Japon asıllı Amerikan yazar Takumi Sato'nun takma isimle yayınlanan casusluk romanı, bu romanın yazılması sürecinden editörünün Sato'ya gönderdiği mektuplar, ve Sato'nun aslında yazmayı istediği ama o dönemin şartları yüzünden yarım bıraktığı, sonra askerdeyken elden geçirip tamamladığı ilk romanı. Bu anlatılar arasındaki geçişler o kadar başarılı yapılmış, kurgu öylesine güzel ki kitap su gibi akıp gidiyor. En sonunda bu anlatıların birbirine bağlanması da bir o kadar etkileyici.
Kitabı bu kadar güzel kılan tek şey postmodern anlatının başarısı da değil. Kitabın 2. Dünya Savaşı sırasındaki Amerika'da geçmesi ve Japon asıllı Amerikan vatandaşlarına yapılan yaptırımları, yaşanan ırkçılığı gözler önüne sermesi ise özellikle önemli çünkü bu dönemi bu açıdan ele alan pek fazla kurgu eser bilmiyorum ben.
Beklediğimden çok daha fazla sevdim ben bu kitabı, zaten iki oturuşta da bitirdim. Hikaye daha farklı kurgulanarak kitabın içerdiği oyunun daha ilk sayfadan okura açıklanması yerine sonlara bırakılıp sürpriz yapılabilirdi ama bu haliyle de beni çok mutlu eden bir roman olduğunu söylemeliyim. Alışıldığı üzere Duygu Hanımın çevirisi de kusursuzdu, onu da es geçmeyeyim.
Kitabı bu kadar güzel kılan tek şey postmodern anlatının başarısı da değil. Kitabın 2. Dünya Savaşı sırasındaki Amerika'da geçmesi ve Japon asıllı Amerikan vatandaşlarına yapılan yaptırımları, yaşanan ırkçılığı gözler önüne sermesi ise özellikle önemli çünkü bu dönemi bu açıdan ele alan pek fazla kurgu eser bilmiyorum ben.
Beklediğimden çok daha fazla sevdim ben bu kitabı, zaten iki oturuşta da bitirdim. Hikaye daha farklı kurgulanarak kitabın içerdiği oyunun daha ilk sayfadan okura açıklanması yerine sonlara bırakılıp sürpriz yapılabilirdi ama bu haliyle de beni çok mutlu eden bir roman olduğunu söylemeliyim. Alışıldığı üzere Duygu Hanımın çevirisi de kusursuzdu, onu da es geçmeyeyim.
December 28, 2020
Gordon McAlpine weaves together three stories, set in Los Angeles in 1941-42, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. (I) Japanese-American Sam Sumida ditches his art professorship to search for his wife's murderer as the police seem disinterested in solving the crime. (II) Korean-American Jimmy Park is recruited for a secret government mission to trap and eliminate the head of a Japanese spy ring, a deadly female assassin, codename The Orchid. (III) Finally, Maxine Wakefield is a book editor (i.e., the title character), who encourages the Japanese-American author, Takumi Sato, rewrite his book from (I) to (II) given the rising anti-Japanese sentiment as he is forced into the infamous Manzanar prison camp. I liked how the plotlines came together.
June 5, 2016
I know the narration scheme of this book seems like it would be confusing: (1)story told by deleted character, (2)story told by replacement character, (3)letters from editor to first-time author. Sounds difficult to follow, but this crazy jumble flows beautifully. How can a reader not root for a character (and an author) who is scratched from his life and purpose? Stir in Pearl Harbor, racial hatred and fear, and Internment Camps and you've got a unique little book.
March 1, 2019
Japanese-American art prof and amateur PI Sam Sumida is watching the new movie called The Maltese Falcon at his local LA fleapit one night -- the night before, although he doesn't yet know this, the Pearl Harbor attack -- when the film breaks. Moments later, when the image is restored, he's watching a completely different movie: now it's the Hepburn/Tracy comedy Woman of the Year.
And, as he discovers when he reels out into the night, two months or so have passed during the projectionist's interruption of service. Japanese-Americans are now regularly beaten up by Good Ol' Boy "patriots," and will soon face relocation into internment camps. Worse still, he discovers there's no evidence that until this moment he ever existed in this not-so-brave new world: he seems to have arrived in a lonely place, one that looks uncannily like his old haunt but is different in so many ways.
Worse still, this new world knows nothing of Sam's loved if unfaithful wife Kyoko, whose eventually murder spurred him into ditching his academic post to embrace private detection.
What could possibly have happened?
What has happened is that Sam and Kyoko are fictional characters in the highly promising part-manuscript, The Revised, that a young Japanese-American author, Takumi Sato, has produced in the months before Pearl Harbor and sold to NY publisher Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc. The publisher's editor, Maxine Wakefield -- the woman with the blue pencil -- now, post-Pearl Harbor, wants to buy out of their contract because no red-blooded American is going to want to buy a novel with a Jap as protagonist.
On the other hand, Maxine reckons she's discovered a great talent. If the author could only tweak things a bit . . .
So Woman with a Blue Pencil has three interwoven strands: the author's original novel, as he continues to write it; the substitute, tweaked novel that he writes at his editor's insistence, The Orchid and the Secret Agent, as by William Thorne; and extracts from the letters of "suggestions" that Maxine sends the author.
This sounds as if it could all be very confusing: A three-stranded narrative, Carruthers? What in the name of the good Lord can the Empire be coming to, eh? But in fact McAlpine handles it superbly and there's no confusion at all.
What soon becomes evident is that the Sam Sumida manuscript is a wholly engrossing, sensitively written exemplar of the kind of 1940s mystery you wish you could find in a used bookstore somewhere and brag about all over the intertubes. Sam himself is a wonderful creation, someone with whom I found it immediately easy to identify. He can't get away from the fact that he loves his murdered wife, even though she betrayed him.
By contrast, the novel that Maxine persuades the author to write, The Orchid and the Secret Agent, is the most dreadful 1940s pulp, full of racial stereotypes, jingoism, narcissistic portrayal of "homegrown" -- i.e., white -- Americans, and cliche. The embarrassing thing to admit is that I found the The Orchid and the Secret Agent strands highly readable too, as Korean-American superspy Jimmy Park takes on the infernal, Fu Manchu-like Japanese spy network that aims to overthrow US democracy.
The network is headed by a femme fatale called the Orchid. No prizes for guessing that, in Sam's original timeline, the Orchid was Sam's beloved wife Kyoko.
What becomes evident from Maxine's letters and from the two narratives is that, while the whole time she thinks she's making the novel better -- not to mention improving its commercial prospects and turning its author into a Big Name of the Future -- Maxine is in fact destroying it in every possible respect. Even when Takumi, by now incarcerated in a concentration camp, tries to introduce touches of realism about the experiences Americans of oriental extraction are facing in their post-Pearl Harbor nightmare, Maxine ruthlessly excises them with her famous blue pencil on the grounds that neither the censor nor the readership would tolerate the portrayal of WASPs as anything but, well, perfect Aryan gods.
In a last-page zinger we learn what Sato thinks of what's now become in effect Maxine's novel.
Obviously there are subtexts galore going on in Woman with a Blue Pencil, far more than I can sensibly outline here. Some concern the compromises publishing makes while all the while lauding itself for its virtue; some are clearly relevant to modern US self-deception about its success in consigning its racism to history's dustbin. Even without those subtexts, though, this would still be a magnificent piece of work: it's an enthralling meld of the parallel-world story with the PI/hardboiled genre with the kitsch spy thriller.
While reading it, I found myself often reminded of Anthony Horowitz, every other mystery reader's fave du jour: he bends the mystery genre, discovers brilliant new ways of telling, that sort of thing. I've read and quite liked a couple of Horowitzes, but McAlpine manages to convey that same metafictional imaginative zing in about half the number of pages.
Ooo, look here. Apparently McAlpine's written a Hammett-oriented novel. I wonder if . . .
And, as he discovers when he reels out into the night, two months or so have passed during the projectionist's interruption of service. Japanese-Americans are now regularly beaten up by Good Ol' Boy "patriots," and will soon face relocation into internment camps. Worse still, he discovers there's no evidence that until this moment he ever existed in this not-so-brave new world: he seems to have arrived in a lonely place, one that looks uncannily like his old haunt but is different in so many ways.
Worse still, this new world knows nothing of Sam's loved if unfaithful wife Kyoko, whose eventually murder spurred him into ditching his academic post to embrace private detection.
What could possibly have happened?
What has happened is that Sam and Kyoko are fictional characters in the highly promising part-manuscript, The Revised, that a young Japanese-American author, Takumi Sato, has produced in the months before Pearl Harbor and sold to NY publisher Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc. The publisher's editor, Maxine Wakefield -- the woman with the blue pencil -- now, post-Pearl Harbor, wants to buy out of their contract because no red-blooded American is going to want to buy a novel with a Jap as protagonist.
On the other hand, Maxine reckons she's discovered a great talent. If the author could only tweak things a bit . . .
So Woman with a Blue Pencil has three interwoven strands: the author's original novel, as he continues to write it; the substitute, tweaked novel that he writes at his editor's insistence, The Orchid and the Secret Agent, as by William Thorne; and extracts from the letters of "suggestions" that Maxine sends the author.
This sounds as if it could all be very confusing: A three-stranded narrative, Carruthers? What in the name of the good Lord can the Empire be coming to, eh? But in fact McAlpine handles it superbly and there's no confusion at all.
What soon becomes evident is that the Sam Sumida manuscript is a wholly engrossing, sensitively written exemplar of the kind of 1940s mystery you wish you could find in a used bookstore somewhere and brag about all over the intertubes. Sam himself is a wonderful creation, someone with whom I found it immediately easy to identify. He can't get away from the fact that he loves his murdered wife, even though she betrayed him.
By contrast, the novel that Maxine persuades the author to write, The Orchid and the Secret Agent, is the most dreadful 1940s pulp, full of racial stereotypes, jingoism, narcissistic portrayal of "homegrown" -- i.e., white -- Americans, and cliche. The embarrassing thing to admit is that I found the The Orchid and the Secret Agent strands highly readable too, as Korean-American superspy Jimmy Park takes on the infernal, Fu Manchu-like Japanese spy network that aims to overthrow US democracy.
The network is headed by a femme fatale called the Orchid. No prizes for guessing that, in Sam's original timeline, the Orchid was Sam's beloved wife Kyoko.
What becomes evident from Maxine's letters and from the two narratives is that, while the whole time she thinks she's making the novel better -- not to mention improving its commercial prospects and turning its author into a Big Name of the Future -- Maxine is in fact destroying it in every possible respect. Even when Takumi, by now incarcerated in a concentration camp, tries to introduce touches of realism about the experiences Americans of oriental extraction are facing in their post-Pearl Harbor nightmare, Maxine ruthlessly excises them with her famous blue pencil on the grounds that neither the censor nor the readership would tolerate the portrayal of WASPs as anything but, well, perfect Aryan gods.
In a last-page zinger we learn what Sato thinks of what's now become in effect Maxine's novel.
Obviously there are subtexts galore going on in Woman with a Blue Pencil, far more than I can sensibly outline here. Some concern the compromises publishing makes while all the while lauding itself for its virtue; some are clearly relevant to modern US self-deception about its success in consigning its racism to history's dustbin. Even without those subtexts, though, this would still be a magnificent piece of work: it's an enthralling meld of the parallel-world story with the PI/hardboiled genre with the kitsch spy thriller.
While reading it, I found myself often reminded of Anthony Horowitz, every other mystery reader's fave du jour: he bends the mystery genre, discovers brilliant new ways of telling, that sort of thing. I've read and quite liked a couple of Horowitzes, but McAlpine manages to convey that same metafictional imaginative zing in about half the number of pages.
Ooo, look here. Apparently McAlpine's written a Hammett-oriented novel. I wonder if . . .
November 24, 2015
This novel is a very clever addition to the hard-boiled detective genre. Its parallel stories are set in Los Angeles in 1941-42, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor and its aftermath figure in all of them. In the first plotline, Japanese-American Sam Sumida searches for information about his wife's murder. In the second, Korean-American Jimmy Park is recruited to serve on a secret government mission to infiltrate a Japanese spy ring.
The third "story" bridges the first two. We find out that Sam Sumida's story was written by a Japanese-American author, Takumi Sato. Maxine Wakefield, Sato's editor, tells him that a book written by a Japanese-American with a Japanese-American protagonist will not sell in the country's anti-Japanese political climate. (I read this book shortly after the terrorist attacks in Paris, and the subsequent anti-[fill in the blank] rhetoric was chillingly familiar.) Wielding her "blue pencil," Wakefield suggests major revisions, and Park's story, written by "William Thorne," is the result.
Sato, however, continues to write Sumida's story and keeps this manuscript to himself, while submitting Park's story to Wakefield for edits even as he is interned and later enlists in the army. The joy of Woman with a Blue Pencil comes in seeing how Sumida's and Park's stories merge.
The "real" author, Gordon McAlpine, gives us authentic glimpses of the period and place. Scenes take place at real locations (The Pike in Long Beach, Wilson High School in Long Beach, White Point in San Pedro, and Little Tokyo near downtown L.A.) that made me feel like he lives in the area.
As fun as this book was, I have to nitpick about some of the writing, which at times was less than smooth. I was confused by a plot point in which Japanese characters were translated into English words, which were then scrambled to provide a clue. Luckily for the protagonists, they happened upon the exact, precise English words to be used--no synonyms here, thank you very much. There were also some typos (an unclosed paren; the use of "discreet" rather than "discrete"). Where was the editor's blue pencil?
The third "story" bridges the first two. We find out that Sam Sumida's story was written by a Japanese-American author, Takumi Sato. Maxine Wakefield, Sato's editor, tells him that a book written by a Japanese-American with a Japanese-American protagonist will not sell in the country's anti-Japanese political climate. (I read this book shortly after the terrorist attacks in Paris, and the subsequent anti-[fill in the blank] rhetoric was chillingly familiar.) Wielding her "blue pencil," Wakefield suggests major revisions, and Park's story, written by "William Thorne," is the result.
Sato, however, continues to write Sumida's story and keeps this manuscript to himself, while submitting Park's story to Wakefield for edits even as he is interned and later enlists in the army. The joy of Woman with a Blue Pencil comes in seeing how Sumida's and Park's stories merge.
The "real" author, Gordon McAlpine, gives us authentic glimpses of the period and place. Scenes take place at real locations (The Pike in Long Beach, Wilson High School in Long Beach, White Point in San Pedro, and Little Tokyo near downtown L.A.) that made me feel like he lives in the area.
As fun as this book was, I have to nitpick about some of the writing, which at times was less than smooth. I was confused by a plot point in which Japanese characters were translated into English words, which were then scrambled to provide a clue. Luckily for the protagonists, they happened upon the exact, precise English words to be used--no synonyms here, thank you very much. There were also some typos (an unclosed paren; the use of "discreet" rather than "discrete"). Where was the editor's blue pencil?
March 5, 2016
Though I like a postmodern detective novel, I was skeptical of Woman With a Blue Pencil at first. Though I was intrigued by the conceit, and was immediately drawn to "discarded" spy-novel protagonist Sam Sumida, I was a bit worried at first that the book was all gimmicks. I'm happy to report I was wrong, however. As much as McAlpine adopts the "hard-boiled" style of detective novels, Woman With a Blue Pencil is masterfully plotted and executed, and only gets better as it goes along. Sumida, a grieving academic turned private eye who is investigating the murder of his wife, is not just "excised" from his story, he becomes a part of the new story of Jimmy Park, the muscularly jingoistic Korean-American operative who has replaced him, a Japanese-American hero having become unmarketable in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Furthermore, both Jimmy's story, "The Orchid and the Secret Agent" and Sam's (unpublished) one, "The Revisions" flow from the pen of the same author, a young Nisei confined to an internment camp, the changes made at the behest of his editor and her "trusty" blue pencil.
Though the tropes of the detective novel (the murders, the crude banter of men over shots of rye, the femme fatale) are present, the novel has heart as well as brains. In "The Revisions" it is palpable, as Sumida's sense of loss is compounded by the literal loss of his very identity. In "The Orchid and the Secret Agent" it is suppressed, the omissions being revealed in the exerpted letters from the blue-pencil-wielding editor, Maxine Wakefield, which appear after each chapter of the former. As Ms. Wakefield exhorts the author to accept her revisions and most of all to continue writing, she reveals more details about her personal life. As with all else in this novel, she is not always what she seems. Like any good detective novel, this one builds momentum as it approaches the conclusion, and the ending does not disappoint. Woman With a Blue Pencil manages to play with the form of the detective novel and remain fun and satisfying to read.
Though the tropes of the detective novel (the murders, the crude banter of men over shots of rye, the femme fatale) are present, the novel has heart as well as brains. In "The Revisions" it is palpable, as Sumida's sense of loss is compounded by the literal loss of his very identity. In "The Orchid and the Secret Agent" it is suppressed, the omissions being revealed in the exerpted letters from the blue-pencil-wielding editor, Maxine Wakefield, which appear after each chapter of the former. As Ms. Wakefield exhorts the author to accept her revisions and most of all to continue writing, she reveals more details about her personal life. As with all else in this novel, she is not always what she seems. Like any good detective novel, this one builds momentum as it approaches the conclusion, and the ending does not disappoint. Woman With a Blue Pencil manages to play with the form of the detective novel and remain fun and satisfying to read.
April 25, 2017
This is a really clever combination of hard-boiled detective novel meets historical fiction meets meta commentary on writing and character creation. The premise is that a young man of Japanese descent is set to publish his first novel under contract just as WWII breaks out. This necessitates an overhaul of the plot and characters based on the cultural climate, overseen by his editor. We follow the changes by reading a revised version of the original and the final product, woven together and interspersed with selections of his editor's letters.
The truly meta bit is that the revised original is focused on this question: what happens to characters when writers abandon them? In this case, they're trying to figure out their own version of the same question as they navigate their lives and are - unwittingly and unknowingly - driving some of the action in the new story.
In short, it could have been tedious and clumsy, but is instead adept and clever. Plus I feel like I learned a few things about that era through auxiliary googling.
The truly meta bit is that the revised original is focused on this question: what happens to characters when writers abandon them? In this case, they're trying to figure out their own version of the same question as they navigate their lives and are - unwittingly and unknowingly - driving some of the action in the new story.
In short, it could have been tedious and clumsy, but is instead adept and clever. Plus I feel like I learned a few things about that era through auxiliary googling.
March 21, 2020
Set in the Pacific war period of WWII, a Japanese-American novelist is writing a detective story when he is instructed by his editor (the woman with the blue pencil) to change up the story and publish under a Caucasian nom de plume. The resulting work contains 3 interwoven narratives: the original book which has a Japanese-American man attempting to investigate his wife's murder, the new book which has a Korean operative working to destroy a Japanese spy ring, and the editor who is guiding the author's pen.
A delightful slip of a book which could have been a creative writing assignment, responding to the Aldous Huxley quote (maybe fictional) at the beginning of the book:
“… he’ll never understand the nature of his sudden alienation, because he’s never known that he is a fictional character. He still doesn’t know. So how can he grasp what’s happened to him, that he’s been cut from a novel-in-progress, excised from his world, which from this point forward carries on around him even though it contains neither memory nor record of his ever having existed? In short, how can he understand that he is the abandoned creation of a conflicted author, whose tossing of typewritten pages into a trash can has not snuffed out everything and everyone written on them?”
4.5 stars, rounded up for ingenuity.
A delightful slip of a book which could have been a creative writing assignment, responding to the Aldous Huxley quote (maybe fictional) at the beginning of the book:
“… he’ll never understand the nature of his sudden alienation, because he’s never known that he is a fictional character. He still doesn’t know. So how can he grasp what’s happened to him, that he’s been cut from a novel-in-progress, excised from his world, which from this point forward carries on around him even though it contains neither memory nor record of his ever having existed? In short, how can he understand that he is the abandoned creation of a conflicted author, whose tossing of typewritten pages into a trash can has not snuffed out everything and everyone written on them?”
4.5 stars, rounded up for ingenuity.
July 27, 2025
This little book has been on my bookshelf for close to 10 years, surviving several rounds of book clean-out/donation rounds. Now having read it, it’s sort of fitting that this book and its characters were tossed aside for a while.
Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American art professor has assumed the role of private investigator when no one seems interested in investigating the murder of his unfaithful wife. But when the attack on Pearl Harbor happens, Sumida is cast aside. Turns out he’s a character in a novel rewritten to appeal to readers when the public has turned against any one of Japanese, even Asian, descent. Except no one told Sam and he continues to pursue answers to his wife’s murder while also trying to figure out why it seems he no longer exists in the world.
Told from three points of view, including that of an opinionated, over-involved, unreliable editor (with a blue pencil), Woman With a Blue Pencil is intriguingly and creatively told in such a way as to keep readers guessing without confusing them. At the same time it is a window into the thought processes and climate of the US during an unfair and dark spot in American history.
Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American art professor has assumed the role of private investigator when no one seems interested in investigating the murder of his unfaithful wife. But when the attack on Pearl Harbor happens, Sumida is cast aside. Turns out he’s a character in a novel rewritten to appeal to readers when the public has turned against any one of Japanese, even Asian, descent. Except no one told Sam and he continues to pursue answers to his wife’s murder while also trying to figure out why it seems he no longer exists in the world.
Told from three points of view, including that of an opinionated, over-involved, unreliable editor (with a blue pencil), Woman With a Blue Pencil is intriguingly and creatively told in such a way as to keep readers guessing without confusing them. At the same time it is a window into the thought processes and climate of the US during an unfair and dark spot in American history.
April 28, 2019
EBk-M, Nook, @ 2015, read 4/27/19. Fiction, mystery, U.S. Internment camps, Japanese Americans, WWII. GP Book Club for May mtg. A confusing story that jumps back and forth between fictional characters and story lines. The first is trying to solve the murder of his wife, and he and his nemesis are edited out of the book and are replaced by the second who's story is to break the Japanese espionage ring operating in the U.S. All the while, the editor was eliminating the original tale. Could have been so much more. Couldn't find a rhythm, didn't much like the characters. I didn't hate it, so at best, I'll give it 2☆'s = Okay. Sorry, I know I'm in the minority here, but oh well!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 10, 2024
There is something really beautiful about this book. The premise is that a Japanese-American author has just submitted his novel to his editor on the eve of Pearl Harbor. As a result, his editor has asked that he change his protagonist from Japanese to Korean. What unfolds are three storylines: the novel's original character, who has become untethered from his story; the new story focused on the Korean protagonist; and the story of the author himself, which is told through letters. Though it might be classified as detective fiction, this is a sophisticated book!
September 23, 2017
This was definitely a 3.5 that could have easily been a 5. The synopsis on the back was a little misleading. it would have been so much better if we hadn't known that there were 2 stories being written, if Sam's story had seemed like real life. and if the mysterious lady with the blue pencil hadn't been named...
March 15, 2016
At the recent Left Coast Crime convention in Phoenix I attended a panel on book reviewers. When these reviewers were asked their favorite book from the past year, one answered Woman with a Blue Pencil, and the others cooed in agreement.
The book has a high concept that, were not for the endorsements, might have scared me off—it's the sort of thing that would have appealed to me more when I was 21 (I'm 47 now). In the story, a Japanese-American writes a pulp fiction novel, and then Pearl Harbor happens, and an editor from New York asks him to rewrite the book and make his hero Korean-American, instead of Japanese. Also, instead of solving a murder, the hero is now infiltrating a Japanese spy ring. Woman With a Blue Pencil gives you, in alternating hunks, 1) the story of the original hero (who becomes unrecognized in his own reality as the book is revised); 2) the new story with the Korean-American hero, and 3) notes from the New York editor (the titular woman with the blue pencil).
I ended up liking this very much—and whipping right through it. McAlpine's story is clever but also wise. And suspenseful. I was surprised to find myself caring about the fate of the characters more than in many straight mysteries I've read. McApline even has the decency to supply a satisfying ending. I will be hunting down more of his work.
March 17, 2021
This is quite a sophisticated novel although you wouldn't think it by the looks of it. It is a sort of parody of the hard-boiled detective genre, as well as a satirical take on the inner workings of the publishing industry (especially pulp fiction of the '40s), a comic exploration of editor-writer relationships and a philosophical examination of the independent lives of literary characters. Not bad for one short novel, ha? On top of all this, the novel's background is that of WWII, focusing on the terrible treatment Americans of Japanese descent had to endure in America after Pearl Harbor. I really don't understand how the author managed to cram all this into such a short space without losing anything on the way, but he did - the humor, the suspense, the ideas - everything is there and well-executed. I love a writer who doesn't take himself or his writing too seriously and is confident enough to play with ideas and genres. When the result is this unique and original yet very readable and fun, it makes things even more enjoyable for me. I'll be trying to put my hands on some more McAlpine following this read.
February 18, 2016
This book has really stuck with me since I finished it a month ago. Sharp indictment of how people, including writers and editors, try to own other people's narratives through retelling, editing, memory-shaping, and interpreting. What the author does is very complex, but it never felt that way while I read. I won't say too much because I do not wish to spoil any of the pleasure of discovering it, but... the author took the noir genre and found a way to create something special and new. Every time I thought the novel was falling into some cliche or stereotype, something happened to put a new twist on the familiar tropes. Utterly original and especially fun if you have spent much time in LA.
July 5, 2017
Woman with a Blue Pencil is a deceptively simple detective story with a twist that weaves together three different tales. But rest assured that it isn’t simple at all. It has layers which need to be peeled back and examined in order to fully appreciate the book.
SPOILERS follow.
Let’s begin to scratch the surface. We are given one page with dates of historical significance. The first two are fact and the third is a fiction, but a given in the context of the story.
The first chapter begins with a quote and presents an idea I have not entertained before, but which I think has been examined in at least a movie and a play, the names of which escape me. That notion grabbed a hold of me and demanded attention. Aldous Huxley (cited as being overheard in a conversation at Clifton’s Cafeteria, Los Angeles) is quoted as follows:
“… he’ll never understand the nature of his sudden alienation, because he’s never known that he is a fictional character. He still doesn’t know. So how can he grasp what’s happened to him, that he’s been cut from a novel-in-progress, excised from his world, which from this point forward carries on around him even though it contains neither memory nor record of his ever having existed? In short, how can he understand that he is the abandoned creation of a conflicted author, whose tossing of typewritten pages into a trash can has not snuffed out everything and everyone written on them?”
Wow!
This book is about a first time writer, Takumi Sato, who has to throw out the first chapters of his detective novel on advice from his editor, Maxine Wakefield, in order to have his story published and hopefully achieve commercial success. Maxine is THE woman with the blue pencil. Sato salvages what he can by excising his protagonist, Sam Sumida, and replacing him with a new one, Jimmy Park. Jimmy Park’s story has a different angle and takes off in a different, yet parallel, direction than that of Sam Sumida. What follows in the book are three tales: Takumi Sato’s, Sam Sumida’s and Jimmy Park’s. Each tales interrupts the other. Sumida’s and Park’s are told in a narrative voice while Sato’s is told through the correspondence he receives from his editor. The tales are told in a chronological manner so that the reader can ultimately put together what had transpired.
The beauty of the book is how it all fits together. That is where I think that history buffs (or amateurs like me) will flip. Takumi Sato is, as is Sam Sumida, first generation American whose parents emigrated from Japan. Jimmy Park is Korean. Maxine Wakefield is, by deduction of the English surname, a Caucasian American. Woman with a Blue Pencil is set in California during a period in American history that will “live in infamy” – the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor as it related to those of Japanese descent.
We learn that the attack is the reason why Takumi Sato had to revise his novel and see how Maxine Wakefield advises and influences Sato and his novel. Sam Sumida’s story was supposed to be a tale of a man who gives up everything in order to solve his wife’s murder. Instead he finds himself in a world from which he has been erased in a matter of seconds, and yet continues to exist. Takumi Sato’s experience is analogous to that of his character. Sato’s life, as he knew it, was irrevocably changed on December 7, 1941. He has to face a new reality. He is forced to relocate to an internment camp, as he is forced to change his novel in order to keep his dream of being a writer alive.
The book is littered with representations of that period. Racist references; common jargon of the time such as the “yellow peril”; reminders, by way of the character Jimmy Park, of atrocities committed by the Japanese on the Korean people; and a brief lesson in fictional Asian sleuths such as Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto, give the reader a taste of how things were. By design, Gordon McAlpine’s Woman with a Blue Pencil (published in 2015) does not erase, excuse, or censor what was considered common at that time and is now considered politically incorrect and unacceptable. Instead, it examines this via the characters’ points of view, actions, and motivations. Written in historical context, McAlpine’s Woman with a Blue Pencil cleverly invites the reader to “…understand a person . . . [to] consider things from his point of view . . . [by] climb[ing] into his skin and walk[ing] around in it.” (Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.)
And there is so much to consider! I cannot begin to point everything out.
ASIDE
As this is Goodreads, and writing fictional Asian detectives were “discussed” in Woman with a Blue Pencil, I want to bring something up.
My favorite genre is mystery. Movie and TV detectives usually lead me to a mystery series. Once upon a time, I saw a 1937 film called Thank You, Mr. Moto with Peter Lorre in the title role. I was intrigued by the Japanese detective and the pre-WWII setting so I checked out Mr. Moto: Four Complete Novels by John P. Marquand and set off to read them all. I got through Right You Are, Mr. Moto, but wasn’t able to finish the volume. It was unsatisfying. Mr. Moto barely appeared in the story. What the heck is that all about?
Now I get it. I learned from Woman with a Blue Pencil that despite being the titular character, Marquand’s Moto series did not feature Mr. Moto as the protagonist because it is “Caucasian-centric.” Maybe one day I will tackle another Mr. Moto mystery taking this into consideration, but most of the fun is lost when you don’t get to shadow detectives as they gather clues and put the puzzles together.
WRAP UP
I highly recommend this book for the story, themes, history, and interesting conversation sure to follow.
SPOILERS follow.
Let’s begin to scratch the surface. We are given one page with dates of historical significance. The first two are fact and the third is a fiction, but a given in the context of the story.
The first chapter begins with a quote and presents an idea I have not entertained before, but which I think has been examined in at least a movie and a play, the names of which escape me. That notion grabbed a hold of me and demanded attention. Aldous Huxley (cited as being overheard in a conversation at Clifton’s Cafeteria, Los Angeles) is quoted as follows:
“… he’ll never understand the nature of his sudden alienation, because he’s never known that he is a fictional character. He still doesn’t know. So how can he grasp what’s happened to him, that he’s been cut from a novel-in-progress, excised from his world, which from this point forward carries on around him even though it contains neither memory nor record of his ever having existed? In short, how can he understand that he is the abandoned creation of a conflicted author, whose tossing of typewritten pages into a trash can has not snuffed out everything and everyone written on them?”
Wow!
This book is about a first time writer, Takumi Sato, who has to throw out the first chapters of his detective novel on advice from his editor, Maxine Wakefield, in order to have his story published and hopefully achieve commercial success. Maxine is THE woman with the blue pencil. Sato salvages what he can by excising his protagonist, Sam Sumida, and replacing him with a new one, Jimmy Park. Jimmy Park’s story has a different angle and takes off in a different, yet parallel, direction than that of Sam Sumida. What follows in the book are three tales: Takumi Sato’s, Sam Sumida’s and Jimmy Park’s. Each tales interrupts the other. Sumida’s and Park’s are told in a narrative voice while Sato’s is told through the correspondence he receives from his editor. The tales are told in a chronological manner so that the reader can ultimately put together what had transpired.
The beauty of the book is how it all fits together. That is where I think that history buffs (or amateurs like me) will flip. Takumi Sato is, as is Sam Sumida, first generation American whose parents emigrated from Japan. Jimmy Park is Korean. Maxine Wakefield is, by deduction of the English surname, a Caucasian American. Woman with a Blue Pencil is set in California during a period in American history that will “live in infamy” – the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor as it related to those of Japanese descent.
We learn that the attack is the reason why Takumi Sato had to revise his novel and see how Maxine Wakefield advises and influences Sato and his novel. Sam Sumida’s story was supposed to be a tale of a man who gives up everything in order to solve his wife’s murder. Instead he finds himself in a world from which he has been erased in a matter of seconds, and yet continues to exist. Takumi Sato’s experience is analogous to that of his character. Sato’s life, as he knew it, was irrevocably changed on December 7, 1941. He has to face a new reality. He is forced to relocate to an internment camp, as he is forced to change his novel in order to keep his dream of being a writer alive.
The book is littered with representations of that period. Racist references; common jargon of the time such as the “yellow peril”; reminders, by way of the character Jimmy Park, of atrocities committed by the Japanese on the Korean people; and a brief lesson in fictional Asian sleuths such as Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto, give the reader a taste of how things were. By design, Gordon McAlpine’s Woman with a Blue Pencil (published in 2015) does not erase, excuse, or censor what was considered common at that time and is now considered politically incorrect and unacceptable. Instead, it examines this via the characters’ points of view, actions, and motivations. Written in historical context, McAlpine’s Woman with a Blue Pencil cleverly invites the reader to “…understand a person . . . [to] consider things from his point of view . . . [by] climb[ing] into his skin and walk[ing] around in it.” (Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.)
And there is so much to consider! I cannot begin to point everything out.
ASIDE
As this is Goodreads, and writing fictional Asian detectives were “discussed” in Woman with a Blue Pencil, I want to bring something up.
My favorite genre is mystery. Movie and TV detectives usually lead me to a mystery series. Once upon a time, I saw a 1937 film called Thank You, Mr. Moto with Peter Lorre in the title role. I was intrigued by the Japanese detective and the pre-WWII setting so I checked out Mr. Moto: Four Complete Novels by John P. Marquand and set off to read them all. I got through Right You Are, Mr. Moto, but wasn’t able to finish the volume. It was unsatisfying. Mr. Moto barely appeared in the story. What the heck is that all about?
Now I get it. I learned from Woman with a Blue Pencil that despite being the titular character, Marquand’s Moto series did not feature Mr. Moto as the protagonist because it is “Caucasian-centric.” Maybe one day I will tackle another Mr. Moto mystery taking this into consideration, but most of the fun is lost when you don’t get to shadow detectives as they gather clues and put the puzzles together.
WRAP UP
I highly recommend this book for the story, themes, history, and interesting conversation sure to follow.
December 14, 2016
I loved this three stories in one. An aspiring American-Japanese writer, born in Southern California submits the beginnings of a novel on the eve of Pearl Harbor to an East Coast editor. She writes back encouraging comments but suggests some changes due to the bombing. The book revolves around his submissions, her comments and what becomes of characters she wants him to change or write out.
September 24, 2023
I worried about this one when reading some of the blurbs which described it as surreal, experimental; I am not a fan of that type of novel, because my brain has difficulty following them. But instead, this was, in tone a standard detective novel with a bit of hard-boiled ambience. In content, it was indeed unusual, but still quite straightforward, and I really enjoyed it.
October 21, 2016
**Disclaimer: I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads**
This book completely won me over. The attention to detail as the two stories steadily merge is fantastic. The social commentary is poignant, and comes through effortlessly.
This book completely won me over. The attention to detail as the two stories steadily merge is fantastic. The social commentary is poignant, and comes through effortlessly.
March 20, 2016
Brilliant!
July 14, 2025
I'd never heard of this book, or Gordon McAlpine, before, but I randomly happened across it and was drawn in by both the title and the synopsis. I've somewhat recently become a huge fan of this type of story which involves an interplay between author and character - best seen, in my limited experience, in Will Ferrell's Stranger than Fiction. This book isn't exactly like that movie - our characters don't ever interact with the author, or even realize that they're characters. But that does come across to us, and is furthered by the frequent letters we see that are correspondence between an editor (whose letters we read) and an author (whose comments are just suggested based on the words of said editor). Between those letters, we have two stories unfolding in front of us.
The first, representing what is supposed to be the author's initial story, is about a Japanese-American man who is out to solve the murder of his wife almost an year prior. While it doesn't fully unfold this way, we're told over the course of the novel we're reading that this was a storyline that featured a corrupt cop, a cheating wife, and a lovelorn professor-turned-detective when the cops refuse to further investigate her death.
However, while the editor is at least initially enthralled by the story, things change quickly - because the real world setting for the author is in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor - and suddenly, a Japanese-American author and character isn't going to sell well. So she suggests some pretty drastic changes.
This results, in the first story, our character suddenly existing in a world where he doesn't exist. His home isn't his; his friends don't recognize him; his wife is not only not dead, but also never seems to have existed; and the only thing still remaining from his world is the presence of a cop who didn't really do much to help him out back at the beginning when his wife existed and was killed and he wanted someone to investigate.
On the other hand, at the urging of the editor, our author morphs this story into a second story - which features a Korean-American spy who is trying to track down a group of Japanese villains in the months following Pearl Harbor - specifically, an unknown Japanese assassin and, eventually, her mysterious bodyguard.
The stories interplay indirectly, giving us a sort of continuity that almost suggests one story intertwined with the other, overlaid by commentary from this eponymous 'woman with a blue pencil' (aka, the editor, who isn't afraid to make some pretty drastic suggestions - all of which seem to play out in the revised second story). While the way this story is told sort of suggests how things are going to end, and what is going on, it still manages to come together pretty amazingly to give us a solid ending (though - how much of what the editor tells us can we believe, because there's something in her last letter that turns everything she's said up on itself and suggests her comments may have been less based in truth and more in 'what can I say to make the author give me the story I want'?) and a very solid sort of backstory for both our main characters.
The setting being immediately post-Pearl Harbor obviously sets itself up for a lot of derogatory terminology and slurs, which are hard to adjust to, even as they are relatively frequently peppered into the story(ies). Beyond that, though, McAlpine does a wonderful job bringing it all together and it really does make me want to read more of these types of stories - even if there is more obvious fourth wall breaking and interactions between author and character (or even just self-aware characters who know they are in a story).
A lot of stories struggle to give us decent villains because their backstories are always either generic or non-existent, and this avoids that in a spectacular way - though it does raise another question; specifically, who really is the bad guy here?
The complete bastardization of the first story, morphing it so much to create the second story out of it - while I'm not a published author or anything, I can imagine how much it must've hurt the author to take the story he wanted to write and completely destroy it and turn it on its head to write the story the editor said would sell. Mixing the two stories, as McAlpine does, shows us just how much has changed from one story to the next, and even how much the author must've hated it.
I really enjoyed this story, and the concept and approach/handling of it is absolutely brilliant.
The first, representing what is supposed to be the author's initial story, is about a Japanese-American man who is out to solve the murder of his wife almost an year prior. While it doesn't fully unfold this way, we're told over the course of the novel we're reading that this was a storyline that featured a corrupt cop, a cheating wife, and a lovelorn professor-turned-detective when the cops refuse to further investigate her death.
However, while the editor is at least initially enthralled by the story, things change quickly - because the real world setting for the author is in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor - and suddenly, a Japanese-American author and character isn't going to sell well. So she suggests some pretty drastic changes.
This results, in the first story, our character suddenly existing in a world where he doesn't exist. His home isn't his; his friends don't recognize him; his wife is not only not dead, but also never seems to have existed; and the only thing still remaining from his world is the presence of a cop who didn't really do much to help him out back at the beginning when his wife existed and was killed and he wanted someone to investigate.
On the other hand, at the urging of the editor, our author morphs this story into a second story - which features a Korean-American spy who is trying to track down a group of Japanese villains in the months following Pearl Harbor - specifically, an unknown Japanese assassin and, eventually, her mysterious bodyguard.
The stories interplay indirectly, giving us a sort of continuity that almost suggests one story intertwined with the other, overlaid by commentary from this eponymous 'woman with a blue pencil' (aka, the editor, who isn't afraid to make some pretty drastic suggestions - all of which seem to play out in the revised second story). While the way this story is told sort of suggests how things are going to end, and what is going on, it still manages to come together pretty amazingly to give us a solid ending (though - how much of what the editor tells us can we believe, because there's something in her last letter that turns everything she's said up on itself and suggests her comments may have been less based in truth and more in 'what can I say to make the author give me the story I want'?) and a very solid sort of backstory for both our main characters.
The setting being immediately post-Pearl Harbor obviously sets itself up for a lot of derogatory terminology and slurs, which are hard to adjust to, even as they are relatively frequently peppered into the story(ies). Beyond that, though, McAlpine does a wonderful job bringing it all together and it really does make me want to read more of these types of stories - even if there is more obvious fourth wall breaking and interactions between author and character (or even just self-aware characters who know they are in a story).
A lot of stories struggle to give us decent villains because their backstories are always either generic or non-existent, and this avoids that in a spectacular way - though it does raise another question; specifically, who really is the bad guy here?
The complete bastardization of the first story, morphing it so much to create the second story out of it - while I'm not a published author or anything, I can imagine how much it must've hurt the author to take the story he wanted to write and completely destroy it and turn it on its head to write the story the editor said would sell. Mixing the two stories, as McAlpine does, shows us just how much has changed from one story to the next, and even how much the author must've hated it.
I really enjoyed this story, and the concept and approach/handling of it is absolutely brilliant.
April 9, 2018
What an AMAZING story this was - and so utterly original! McAlpine has created a meta-tale about writing, characterization, and the vagaries of life (real and imagined) that is not only a delight to read, but also a delight to analyze...
Woman with a Blue Pencil is a brilliant imagining of what happens to the characters who are cut from a work in progress. But more than that, it is an interwoven tale about the process of writing, compromise, editorial direction, American history, the nefarious nature of timing, and the lies we tell each other to keep daily life plodding along in the direction we want it to go... In prose so crisp it could cut bread, McAlpine weaves together a working manuscript, a tale just to the left of said manuscript, and the letters between an author and his editor about said manuscript into a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts that the cliche sounds even more ridiculous than usual, yet remains perfectly apt - a gestalt realization that I didn't self-edit, despite almost doing so several times (largely because of the very nature of the book it describes), that I recognized as such even as I was writing it...
Did that last bit sound a little trippy and head-cockingly odd? Welcome to McAlpine's world - only he's masterful and it never sounds odd when he does it, only mind-bendingly intriguing.
Sam (the original, Japanese, cut character) offers a fascinating voice of a man lost in the wilderness (of San Diego) of a world that has done an about-face around him in the blink of an eye (or flip of a movie reel). He is complemented by Maxine, the editor at whose "request" (requirement) he has been cut, and by his replacement, Jimmy, the commercially viable Korean-American (heavy on the American) alternative that has been proposed due to the events of December 7, 1942... By intertwining the three voices, McAlpine has managed to offer a study of American racism and post-Pearl Harbor paranoia, literary integrity vs. the commercial practicalities of publishing, and the ever-changing nature of reality that is engaging, witty, clever, and just plain fun to read.
This is a short book (less than 200 pages), but unpacking all the insights and ideas behind it would take ages. It read quickly and easily - McAlpine is nothing if not clear and concise with language (using one word when one will do and nary a syllable more), and he has mastered the exceedingly difficult art of paring things down to the absolute minimum without surrendering an ounce of descriptive magic. McAlpine is - without a doubt - one of my new favorites...
My review copy was generously provided by the publisher, Seventh Street Books. If you are a mystery/crime/thriller fan, you should DEFINITELY check them out - for a small house, their stable of artists is incredible...
Woman with a Blue Pencil is a brilliant imagining of what happens to the characters who are cut from a work in progress. But more than that, it is an interwoven tale about the process of writing, compromise, editorial direction, American history, the nefarious nature of timing, and the lies we tell each other to keep daily life plodding along in the direction we want it to go... In prose so crisp it could cut bread, McAlpine weaves together a working manuscript, a tale just to the left of said manuscript, and the letters between an author and his editor about said manuscript into a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts that the cliche sounds even more ridiculous than usual, yet remains perfectly apt - a gestalt realization that I didn't self-edit, despite almost doing so several times (largely because of the very nature of the book it describes), that I recognized as such even as I was writing it...
Did that last bit sound a little trippy and head-cockingly odd? Welcome to McAlpine's world - only he's masterful and it never sounds odd when he does it, only mind-bendingly intriguing.
Sam (the original, Japanese, cut character) offers a fascinating voice of a man lost in the wilderness (of San Diego) of a world that has done an about-face around him in the blink of an eye (or flip of a movie reel). He is complemented by Maxine, the editor at whose "request" (requirement) he has been cut, and by his replacement, Jimmy, the commercially viable Korean-American (heavy on the American) alternative that has been proposed due to the events of December 7, 1942... By intertwining the three voices, McAlpine has managed to offer a study of American racism and post-Pearl Harbor paranoia, literary integrity vs. the commercial practicalities of publishing, and the ever-changing nature of reality that is engaging, witty, clever, and just plain fun to read.
This is a short book (less than 200 pages), but unpacking all the insights and ideas behind it would take ages. It read quickly and easily - McAlpine is nothing if not clear and concise with language (using one word when one will do and nary a syllable more), and he has mastered the exceedingly difficult art of paring things down to the absolute minimum without surrendering an ounce of descriptive magic. McAlpine is - without a doubt - one of my new favorites...
My review copy was generously provided by the publisher, Seventh Street Books. If you are a mystery/crime/thriller fan, you should DEFINITELY check them out - for a small house, their stable of artists is incredible...
September 15, 2025
A book that flips the manuscript and pulls the rug out from underneath its lead character, a novel concept that was a fun read even if it felt a little lacking.
I loved the concept, although I'm not too sure if the final product lived up to the promise set out in the blurb...
The biggest challenge is maintaining a satisfying investigation when the main character's entire world has suddenly changed, and they, along with almost all the evidence of the murder they're trying to find has ceased to exist.
Regarding Sam, the novel's main (and original protagonist), I do feel
As for Jimmy Park, he was effectively depicted as a two-dimensional, flag-waving stereotype to suit the sensitivities of America after the bombings... He represented everything wrong with someone being forced to sacrifice their artistic integrity to compromise to the demands of the editor/publisher.
Park was a good contrast to the realised and sympathetic Sam, who was just a regular guy with a love of detective fiction/movies, who had tried to first make sense of his normal world that had been turned upside-down, and then a whole other world that had turned entirely against him.
And then, there's Takumi, the third protagonist in Woman with a Blue Pencil, who like Sam .
While in some ways the story was restricted by its own speculative science-fiction/meta premise, it did keep me engrossed, and McAlpine deserves credit for making the two plot narratives (and thus, the two different versions of Takumi's novel) distinguisable and distinct from each other... With Sam's scenes being introspective, and more like a classic noir detective novel, and Jimmy's scenes being more like a pulp spy novel, with lots of bangs and little substance.
And
The end result was commendable.
I'm glad I gave it a try, and I imagine this could serve as a great film or television miniseries were it to be adapted to the small or big screen, and fleshed out a little more.
I loved the concept, although I'm not too sure if the final product lived up to the promise set out in the blurb...
The biggest challenge is maintaining a satisfying investigation when the main character's entire world has suddenly changed, and they, along with almost all the evidence of the murder they're trying to find has ceased to exist.
Regarding Sam, the novel's main (and original protagonist), I do feel
As for Jimmy Park, he was effectively depicted as a two-dimensional, flag-waving stereotype to suit the sensitivities of America after the bombings... He represented everything wrong with someone being forced to sacrifice their artistic integrity to compromise to the demands of the editor/publisher.
Park was a good contrast to the realised and sympathetic Sam, who was just a regular guy with a love of detective fiction/movies, who had tried to first make sense of his normal world that had been turned upside-down, and then a whole other world that had turned entirely against him.
And then, there's Takumi, the third protagonist in Woman with a Blue Pencil, who like Sam .
While in some ways the story was restricted by its own speculative science-fiction/meta premise, it did keep me engrossed, and McAlpine deserves credit for making the two plot narratives (and thus, the two different versions of Takumi's novel) distinguisable and distinct from each other... With Sam's scenes being introspective, and more like a classic noir detective novel, and Jimmy's scenes being more like a pulp spy novel, with lots of bangs and little substance.
And
The end result was commendable.
I'm glad I gave it a try, and I imagine this could serve as a great film or television miniseries were it to be adapted to the small or big screen, and fleshed out a little more.
June 12, 2020
"Please let me know if you can live with my revisions."
Maxine Wakefield, the titular woman with a blue pencil, is one hands-on, manipulative editor. But this novel's real protagonist is the aspiring author she's working with, a young Japanese American writer named Takumi Sato, who has high hopes of becoming published. He's sort of an absent character, never actually appearing except through his written works and as the recipient of Maxine's letters offering heavy editorial advice. Takumi writes two novels, one the direct result of Maxine's guidance and racially charged injunctions, the other despite it. These two works are intertwined and presented here as Takumi conceived them, resulting in a multilayered, inventive whole that has as much of a sci-fi feel as it does a mystery. (Maxine, in Manhattan, calls the book she's giving advice about a "spy thriller"; Takumi, in LA at the outbreak of the U.S. entry into WWII and soon to be writing from an internment camp, mostly follows Maxine's exhortations on the first book but his implicit answer to her question about whether he can live with her revisions is, decidedly, no. He titles the follow-up novel that he can live with, a companion piece to the first, simply The Revised. So much is here for such a small book. The social commentary regarding the era's prevailing racism against Japanese Americans is very much part of the intricate plot. Its larger themes are displacement, alienation, and the eradication (or editing away of) identity. I'm not sure how much this had to do with it, but it seemed fortuitous to have found and read this one during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests happening in early June 2020; certain ideas and motifs definitely coalesced.
First line:
"On the evening of December 6, 1941, Sam Sumida shifted in his seat at the crowded Rialto Movie House in downtown Los Angeles."
January 5, 2020
I was enthralled with the premise of this book (Pam, thought of you).
On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American academic, has been thrust into the role of amateur P.I., investigating his wife’s murder, which has been largely ignored by the LAPD. Sam discovers that, inexplicably, he has become not only unrecognizable to his former acquaintances but that all signs of his existence (including the murder he’s investigating) have been erased. Unaware that he is a discarded, fictional creation, he resumes his investigation in a world now characterized not only by his own sense of isolation but by wartime fear.
Meanwhile, Sam’s story is interspersed with chapters from a pulp spy novel that features an L.A.-based Korean P.I. with jingoistic and anti-Japanese, post-December 7th attitudes – the revised, politically and commercially viable character for whom Sumida has been excised.
Behind it all is the ambitious, 20-year-old Nisei author who has made the changes, despite the relocation of himself and his family to a Japanese internment camp. And, looming above, is his book editor in New York who serves as both muse and manipulator to the young author—the woman with the blue pencil.
The setup was great, but I felt so much more could have been done with it. Worth reading though.
On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American academic, has been thrust into the role of amateur P.I., investigating his wife’s murder, which has been largely ignored by the LAPD. Sam discovers that, inexplicably, he has become not only unrecognizable to his former acquaintances but that all signs of his existence (including the murder he’s investigating) have been erased. Unaware that he is a discarded, fictional creation, he resumes his investigation in a world now characterized not only by his own sense of isolation but by wartime fear.
Meanwhile, Sam’s story is interspersed with chapters from a pulp spy novel that features an L.A.-based Korean P.I. with jingoistic and anti-Japanese, post-December 7th attitudes – the revised, politically and commercially viable character for whom Sumida has been excised.
Behind it all is the ambitious, 20-year-old Nisei author who has made the changes, despite the relocation of himself and his family to a Japanese internment camp. And, looming above, is his book editor in New York who serves as both muse and manipulator to the young author—the woman with the blue pencil.
The setup was great, but I felt so much more could have been done with it. Worth reading though.
December 2, 2019
I found this fascinating ... and I'm not a huge fan of mystery/spy/thriller novels. But McAlpine does an amazing job of interweaving three narrative threads, while creating a period (WWII) noir atmosphere, and ultimately linking all three threads in a brilliant finish. At the same time, it's a story of racism that is sadly timely today. In the period of the novel, right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the targets of white racism were Asians (called Oriental in the book), but the language and the violence are like what we see today directed against Muslims and Latinxs. But the ugly well of hatred is the same now as then. Sadly, that's a vein in the American psyche that continues despite the lessons of the Japanese internments. This book provides not only a thrilling narrative but a lot of food for thought after. Joyce Carol Oates described it as "a brilliantly structured labyrinth of a novel ... a totally unique work of 'mystery' fiction — one that Kafka, Borges, and Nabokov, as well as Dashiell Hammett would have appreciated." I can't top that assessment. It's accurate. Another film candidate to be sure.
January 23, 2018
Startling unique and cleverly constructed, Woman with a Blue Pencil is unlike anything I’ve ever read. The author intertwines several story threads - a character who has been deleted from the author’s manuscript, the character who is created to replace the deleted character, the author who is writing about these characters - and he is does so with deft brilliance. What could have been a confusing mess was a well-crafted bit of ingenuity. And what could have been mere pulpy noir was actually a thoughtful meditation on racism and fear. Though I cannot say I loved Woman with a Blue Pencil , I will confess a level of respect for the author who was able to concoct this work of metafiction.
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