'Blind Submission' turns a jaundiced eye on publishing

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

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Everyone loves a story about a boss who gets her comeuppance, but a well-written story about a boss who gets 40 whacks spawns insurmountable joy in this reader.

Blind Submission, memoirist Debra Ginsberg's first novel, is a cleverly told, genre-bending tale that combines intrigue, romance, a touch of mystery and strong female characters.

With much trepidation, Angel Robinson accepts a job with the Lucy Fiamma Literary Agency in Marin County. She has a passion for books, but there's no love lost between her and the driven and demeaning Fiamma. Just like Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, Fiamma excels at making her underlings feel lower than gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

One of the book's more clever attributes is the use of a proposed novel entitled Blind Submission in the Blind Submission story line. An anonymous author e-mails chapters of the book to Angel, who discovers that the story includes intimate details about her love life and her relationships with her office mates.

Alice, the female protagonist in the e-mailed chapters, mirrors Angel in many ways, but Alice is a murdering (literally), conniving backstabber. Angel is not.

To Angel's consternation, she realizes she has "been living inside a book for as long as I could remember. And now I was living inside Blind Submission, a book about books, which was, in its own perverse way, about me."

Book lovers will enjoy Ginsberg's dead-on look at the publishing industry. The constant search for the next big book. Publishers' unimaginative hunt for the next Da Vinci Code. The acknowledgement of Oprah Winfrey as a player in book selling and the unpredictable nature of the business.

You may not like Lucy Fiamma, but she knows what she's talking about: "Nobody has any imagination anymore and they're all scared to buy anything that isn't incredibly safe or has been done before. I mean, really, how many celebrity children's books do we need. Or prize winning authors writing cookbooks?"

Blind Submission

By Debra Ginsberg

Shaye Areheart, 328 pp., $23.95

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