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R.F. Kuang: Yellowface (Book Review)
Very entertaining satiric novel set in and about the publishing industry. Our first person narrator, June (white), is a writer with a debut novel which didn't make a splash and won't even, so her agent tells her, get a paperback edition, in stark contrast to her college friend Athena Liu's (American Chinese) work: Athena has three novels already published, just secured a Netflix deal and celebrates that and finishing the first draft of her newest work with June when she dies an accidental death by pancake. June doesn't just dial 911. She also makes off with Athena's manuscript, about which only she knows, edits, rewrites and publishes it. Presto, success, at last! ! But wait! There's no lack of sharp-eyed foes waiting, social media is truly a jungle, and June might be her own worst enemy....
As you might gather from the title, racism (not just in the publishing industry) is one of the targets of the novel - June Heywood being the kind of self revealing narrator who sees herself as being entirely without it yet sincerely believes she's being discriminated against because she's white, and whose rewrites of Athena's manuscript include adding sympathetic white characters. And of course, there's the fact that she takes up her agent's suggestion of choosing a new pseudonym once the agent has sold "her" manuscript about the WWI era Chinese workers, one that while consisting of her actual first names "Juniper Song" is deliberately picked to sound vaguely Chinese (it's just ambiguous enough to be safe for her, since she at no point actually claims Asian descent), and the very premise of her stealing a manuscript (which would have been awful in any cirumstance) being made worse by the fact she's stealing it from an Asian American writer. But while I expected that from the short text on the back of the book, what (positively) surprised me was that the bite of the book isn't simply done with "racism bad", but goes after social media with as much sharply observed acid; the way shitstorms work, the way tuning out those voices becomes next to impossible. And of course the whole marketing aspect, the "winner takes it all" mentality of all too many publishers, where they're willing to throw effort behind one or two titles/authors, and leave the others to fend for themselves of they're not dropping them altogether. June might be our villain protagonist, but there are no heroes in this novel; everyone, from the occasional Goodreads commentor to the editors at the publisher(s) to the late Athena is in varying degrees a shark out for blood.
(Of course, we're all seeing them through June's narration, and June - who is incapable of admitting she might have done something wrong - has good reasons for presenting them this way. This said, I didn't have the impression June is meant to be the type of unreliable narrator to invent things from scratch - as opposed to being the type of narrator not realising how what she says comes across -, so when, say, two thirds into the novel she at last revisits a memory from college where Athena did something reprehensible to her, I'm assuming this really happened.)
The novel has the right kind of length for this story - which is to say, less than 400 pages - so the various buildings up of suspense - will June get away with it being the big, but not the only one - are not drawn out too long, and there's not a gigantic cast of characters. Said characters reminded me of comedy of manners types - very stylized, often types for certain ways of behaviour - fittng the satire format. The only other thing of R. F. Kuang's I'd read before was Poppy War, a fantasy novel of a very different type, so I'm impressed by her range. Otoh, if Poppy War was so grim that I emerged emotionally exhausted and sure I would go through the experience again (while being glad I had done so in the first place), Yellowface felt like a slick writty automaton which you observe once and marvel at its cleverness but don't feel the need to do it again. But I will certainly continue to keep out an eye for this author.
As you might gather from the title, racism (not just in the publishing industry) is one of the targets of the novel - June Heywood being the kind of self revealing narrator who sees herself as being entirely without it yet sincerely believes she's being discriminated against because she's white, and whose rewrites of Athena's manuscript include adding sympathetic white characters. And of course, there's the fact that she takes up her agent's suggestion of choosing a new pseudonym once the agent has sold "her" manuscript about the WWI era Chinese workers, one that while consisting of her actual first names "Juniper Song" is deliberately picked to sound vaguely Chinese (it's just ambiguous enough to be safe for her, since she at no point actually claims Asian descent), and the very premise of her stealing a manuscript (which would have been awful in any cirumstance) being made worse by the fact she's stealing it from an Asian American writer. But while I expected that from the short text on the back of the book, what (positively) surprised me was that the bite of the book isn't simply done with "racism bad", but goes after social media with as much sharply observed acid; the way shitstorms work, the way tuning out those voices becomes next to impossible. And of course the whole marketing aspect, the "winner takes it all" mentality of all too many publishers, where they're willing to throw effort behind one or two titles/authors, and leave the others to fend for themselves of they're not dropping them altogether. June might be our villain protagonist, but there are no heroes in this novel; everyone, from the occasional Goodreads commentor to the editors at the publisher(s) to the late Athena is in varying degrees a shark out for blood.
(Of course, we're all seeing them through June's narration, and June - who is incapable of admitting she might have done something wrong - has good reasons for presenting them this way. This said, I didn't have the impression June is meant to be the type of unreliable narrator to invent things from scratch - as opposed to being the type of narrator not realising how what she says comes across -, so when, say, two thirds into the novel she at last revisits a memory from college where Athena did something reprehensible to her, I'm assuming this really happened.)
The novel has the right kind of length for this story - which is to say, less than 400 pages - so the various buildings up of suspense - will June get away with it being the big, but not the only one - are not drawn out too long, and there's not a gigantic cast of characters. Said characters reminded me of comedy of manners types - very stylized, often types for certain ways of behaviour - fittng the satire format. The only other thing of R. F. Kuang's I'd read before was Poppy War, a fantasy novel of a very different type, so I'm impressed by her range. Otoh, if Poppy War was so grim that I emerged emotionally exhausted and sure I would go through the experience again (while being glad I had done so in the first place), Yellowface felt like a slick writty automaton which you observe once and marvel at its cleverness but don't feel the need to do it again. But I will certainly continue to keep out an eye for this author.
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The author and all of her books sound fascinating - I think one of my friends talked about "Babel". I'm slowly easing into reading complex fiction, so I'll keep an eye out for her.
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Yellowface felt like a slick writty automaton which you observe once and marvel at its cleverness but don't feel the need to do it again.
This seems right for what I did read.