Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Our review of Yellowface by R.F Kuang

Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say. Well, I wouldn’t say I judged Yellowface by its cover, but it called to me, like a song (you will see why this a poor joke later). It really did. I have had a longstanding, irrational attraction to bright yellow since about 2018, so it was inevitable that I would read this book. The simplicity of the cover is genius. It’s attractive, bright and powerful. Five stars for the cover. I am not sure that I feel the same way about the novel, though.

Look, it’s not bad. It’s disturbing, it’s accessible, it’s topical and it’s compelling, but it kind of peters out towards the end.

The novel is narrated by Juniper Hayward – an author who graduated from Yale University at the same time as the gorgeous, talented and successful Athena Liu. They were supposed to be rising to fame at the same time, but Athena is leagues ahead of Juniper in terms of publishing success. Juniper is jealous and wallows in her own mediocrity and envy as Athena’s star continues its ascent.

They have a superficial friendship defined by envy and a lack of equality, but they occasionally hang out. On one fateful night, Juniper witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, and then steals her unpublished manuscript. Juniper completes the manuscript that is about the unrecognised contribution of Chinese labourers to World War One. She feels that she is adding to the narrative voice and can once again sizzle as she writes. In her mind, it is a collaboration between authors, and she is saving the novel from incompleteness and obscurity. She blurs the lines in her mind of what is hers and what is, in fact, plagiarism. Doesn’t Athena steal stories, too? Juniper Hayward starts going by Juniper Song (her middle name, reference to earlier lame joke) at the behest of her publisher. You can see why this be might offensive in its ambiguity.

The wheels then start to come off around Juniper as she finally finds success. Juniper and Athena are not nice people. None of the characters in the novel really are – you don’t find yourself rooting for anyone, but you find yourself reading to the end. This is a clever, if slightly pedantic, commentary on the world of publishing (a published work of fiction about the fickle industry of publishing? So meta). It deals with cultural appropriation effectively, as well as the harmful, avalanche- like nature of X-formerly-known-as-Twitter.

Razor-sharp? I’m not so sure. Heavy-handed? A little bit. Anti-climactic? Yes, but I understand why.