Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

Amy  

fiction

June is an aspiring writer who has maintained a strained friendship with her old college friend, Athena, an extremely popular, successful novelist. Athena has everything June wants. One night, as they are having a drunken pancake eating contest (yes, really), Athena chokes and dies. June takes the publicly unknown manuscript Athena has just completed, makes edits, and sells the novel as her own creation to great acclaim. Since June is white, she faces public scrutiny for writing about WWI Chinese Labor Corps members and is accused of cultural appropriation. She also strenuously denies accusations of stealing the book from Athena.

The only other novel I’d read by R.F. Kuang was an extremely violent fantasy full of terrible things being done to people. So I was interested to read something entirely different by her. However, I can definitely still see the amoral, self-absorbed tendencies in these characters that existed within The Poppy War’s characters. Kuang seems to have an affinity for women who see themselves as wronged and, as a result, feel they have license to do bad things.

It is no wonder why June had no friends and was not even close with her family. Sure, she had experienced some traumas before the events of this novel, but the author never drew a straight line between those events and the unprincipled, dishonest, and misguided person she had become. Her motivations seemed to be greed and seeking attention.

June does bad things and deals with the fallout of those choices. In fact, all of her troubles were caused by her own actions. June wasn’t always the most reliable or forthright narrator and her excuses and attempts to spin the narrative didn’t help me like her. Of course, this was the author’s intent but June was such an unlikeable person that I could never really care how her life turned out. She was insecure, guilty, and self-delusional. The sad thing was that she could be very creative when she had to talk her way out of trouble yet she did not seem to be able to come up with any good ideas for a novel herself.

Yellowface touched on some important contemporary topics and controversies being faced within the writing industry such as general publishing obstacles, cultural exploitation, racism, social media reviews/attention, the author's share of profits, writer’s block, and dealing with fickle celebrity status. But, despite these provoking subjects which interested me, I kept looking to see how much of the novel remained because I was hoping it would end soon. I could not get behind June and there was no one who would come out better or improved within this plot. This novel was basically a detailed train wreck told by someone in whose head I wished I didn’t have to stay for too long. I got and appreciated the messages Kuang was passing to the reader, I just didn’t love the experience of living this lengthy story from June’s perspective.

I don’t know whether I’ll read any more books by Kuang.  I see her talent as a writer but I just don’t like reading about all the tarnished characters.

The audiobook was narrated by Helen Laser.  She did a good job overall. She had some different voices up her sleeve and she did June’s snark really well.  I’ll give her an A-.