The Girls in Publishing by Natalie West

The Girls in Publishing Reviews

• 
  John

  I bought this book ten or fifteen years ago at a yard sale, a dime or so's investment that I joyously thought would repay itself many times over through pissing off just about everyone I knew and held dear. Of course, it was only when I got my purchase home that I realized I'd have to actually read the damn' thing for it to have its maximum annoyance value. A chore that I put off and put off and . . . put . . . off . . .
  
  Still, better late than never, eh?
  
  Actually, I'm not too sure about that. "Never" seems with hindsight to have been the best of the options open to me. Still, at least I'll be able to brag at literary soirees that I've read a book that has probably escaped the attention of everyone else there.
  
  Essentially, the novel focuses on a group of mainly female employees at the established NYC company Park Publishing. In between their sexual encounters they occasionally find smidgens of time to dabble in a little book publishing. Assistant Art Editor Kate, for example, stays upright long enough to tinker with the lettering for the cover dummy of an upcoming cookbook, while Editor-in-Chief Diana has a somewhat estranged time of it at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
  
  There's an element of plot in the mix, almost as if someone forgot to take it out: Associate Editor and semi-professional nympho Claire gets hold of the manuscript of a powerful but clumsily written novel produced by an elderly Holocaust survivor. She polishes it and retypes it, then attempts to pass it off as her own. (Spoiler: Her plagiarism is caught in time, and the book's real author gets the fat contract instead.) Other than that, though, the narrative consists to a great extent of nothing but a sequence of relentlessly softcore sex scenes -- and by "softcore" I here mean something that'd likely earn not much more than a PG rating today.
  
  Is this all pretty tedious?
  
  You bet.
  
  Why do I inflict this sort of stuff on myself?
  
  Dunno.
  
  Incidentally, it took a little while for the Goodreads search engine to find this book on the basis of my search terms. Its initial suggestion was The Aeneid, by Virgil. No, I have not the first idea why this should have been.