Clare L. Deming

This book was a step outside my typical genre reads, but I had heard so much about Yellowface by R.F. Kuang that I needed to pick it up. I loved the author’s recent alternate history fantasy novel, Babel, and you can read my review of that here (paid links).

Here is the blurb:

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.

White lies
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.

Dark humour
But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

Deadly consequences…
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

This blurb only explains the set up of this novel. It is about the publishing industry, life as a struggling author, racism, cancel culture, and whose voices should tell which stories. This book was like watching a train wreck. I couldn’t pull myself away and I read it in three days.

June Hayward is a terrible person, but she is eminently sympathetic in this book. She steals the first draft manuscript of her dead friend, revises it, and brings it to her publisher as her own work. Her bad decisions all spiral out of this initial mistake. Yet this book makes you deeply understand why June made those choices.

This book also provides a look at the whims of the publishing industry and the process of writing, revising, marketing, and releasing a book from the author’s perspective. What makes a bestseller and why do some authors get more attention than others, and how do the race and background of the author play into this? Like this author’s earlier book, Babel, this novel is giving me a lot to think about, even after reading it. This is one of those books you should rush to read right now.

Oddly, I find myself more engaged with my owner writing as a side effect of reading this book and I’m not really sure why. In any case, I’m already certain this will be one of the best books I read in 2024. It may also be that rare book that I re-read.

Have you read Yellowface or any of R.F. Kuang’s other work? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.