Book Review | Yellowface

Can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get to this book.

Yellowface
R. F. Kuang

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song–complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

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Yellowface is a clever book and I was excited to read it but I won’t lie to you at a certain point in the story I kind of struggled. As someone who dips in and out of Twitter, because of how negative it can be, it was at times quite difficult reading. I have to admit though, that the author has done a bloody brilliant job of capturing that uneasy negative feeling accurately.

This is a story that is in some respects timeless, as I was reading it I stumbled across a situation on Twitter that echoes what happens in the book. I feel that the author has picked up on and explored a topic that will continue to be meaningful for as long as we have social media, but again has managed to do so in a very engaging way.

What I find interesting is the critique of people but also the publishing industry as a whole, yeah it is a fictional story and therefore exaggerated but I don’t doubt some practices in publishing are close to crossing the lines that are portrayed in this story. I quite enjoyed wondering which parts may be more accurate than others and what was likely satire.

I think it’s fairly obvious that none of the characters are particularly likeable but they are irresistible. June’s journey from a little-known writer, to a successful and award-winning, to polarising personality, is fascinating especially as she starts to grapple with what is right and wrong in the aftermath of success and with Athena’s ghost ever-present. It definitely makes for an interesting character, someone who is almost always on the precipice of being discovered and it was intriguing that I found myself hoping that she wouldn’t get caught one moment and then hoping she would the next, it made for some excellent tension in the story.

I also really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the situation feeling like everything to June but it hardly being a blip on the radar for her family outwith the book world, I thought that was such an apt observation of the world today. Which is another thing I like about this book, you can read it and take it at its entertaining face value or you can read it and delve a little deeper.

This is the first R.F. Kuang book that I have read but I will certainly be looking forward to starting the others that are on my shelf.