A Review of Kim Moritsugu’s The Showrunner (Dundurn, 2018)

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A Review of Kim Moritsugu’s The Showrunner (Dundurn, 2018).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

It’s been awhile since I’ve tackled a number of Asian-Canadian publications, so I’ve been trying to rectify some of these oversights in this quarter. One of my first choices to fill the gap and catch up was Kim Moritsugu’s The Showrunner (Dundurn, 2018). I’ve been a fan of Moritsugu’s work precisely because her fictions tend to have a biting, sarcastic wit to them. Her main characters always have this kind of fierce intelligence and comedic sense of looking at the world, so this novel was certainly a surprise. The premise is provided by B&N:

“Rising-star showrunner Stacey McCreedy has one goal: to leave behind her nerd-girl origins and become a power player — like Ann Dalloni, her former mentor and current producing partner. Ann, meanwhile, is feeling her age and losing her mind. But she’ll be damned if she cedes control of their hit primetime TV show to Stacey. After Ann hires Jenna, a young actress hoping to restart her stalled career, as an assistant, the relationship between Ann and Stacey deteriorates into a blood feud. Soon, Jenna must choose whom to support and whom to betray to achieve her own ends. And Stacey will find out if she possesses the killer instinct needed to stay on top.”

The thing that threw me in this narrative was the level of underhandedness that each character is involved in. The phrase “blood feud” sounds about right, but Moritsugu’s always got more going on than meets the eye. It’s probably Jenna who is most surprising character of the three. A minor critique I had of the novel was the inclusion of Ann Dalloni’s journal entries: I didn’t get why we received this different discursive mode, especially at the expense of the other two major female characters. It would have been useful to get a sense of balance. In terms of my own personal tastes, I didn’t find myself with any emotional grounding in the novel. I generally found the three major female characters unlikable. Maybe that was Moritsugu’s aim, especially to carve out the ways that female professionals must be tactical in the kinds of choices they make in the workplace. In this sense, Moritsugu is very successful, even if the characters are not necessarily the kinds you’d want to hang out with after the end of the long day. Moritsugu always retains her comic timing, especially in her use of third person: we are always laughing at the characters precisely because we get to see how they are attempting to instrumentalize each other at various points in the narrative. One spoiler alert: The one sleight of hand that Moritsugu retains is for Jenna, which truly elevates this narrative from the more standard antagonistic revenge plot. Fans of reality television shows who might have wanted a behind the scenes look on Hollywood will certainly delight in this twisted satire of celebrity and acting culture.

Buy the Book Here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-showrunner-kim-moritsugu/1126799956

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don't hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at sohnucr@gmail.com

Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu

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