Review: "Yellowface" by R. F. Kuang

Quick Summary

Type: Novel

Genre: Contemporary, literary fiction

Back Cover: "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."

Read Time: 5 days

Rating: 2.5 stars

Review

I did not like my first introduction from this author. I thought Babel was a little too heavy-handed without enough nuance or exploration into the more hidden, insidious types of racism; not enough of a critical approach on non-European imperialism (namely, China's imperialist exploits of around the same time); and anachronisms and slow pacing that made my first two complaints too hard to ignore.

But already, this book is moving much quicker than Babel, and the premise is very intriguing. June is jealous of Athena but still hangs out with her, they finally seem like they're actually having fun together, and then Athena dies and June steals her manuscript. The pace is moving, the conflict is a little absurdist in a really fun way, and I'm honestly looking forward to the rest of the story.

At around the half-way point, the novel runs out of steam. The pacing slows down considerably, and rather than fun, the novel feels forced. It still isn't bad, but it's lost what made it so fun and clever at the beginning of the novel.

Also, what is Kuang's problem with the French? I got it in Babel, because it's a commentary on imperialism and racism and the French are imperialist and racist and should be called out on it, but the French don't even play into this book. Why did she repeatedly have to make snide remarks about the French? And why is her only snide remark about the French that they're snobby, aloof, and imperious? There are other things to criticize, and those particular criticisms only really apply to Parisians tired with American and British tourists. Either Kuang needs to be a better tourist, or she needs to go to a French town that's not Paris. I recommend Lyon or Saint-Étienne. Saint-Étienne isn't all that nice, but the people are. She might get a better understanding of actual French people there. But to get back to the point, the French hate in this book was unnecessary and kind of out of left field.

The end is also very disappointing. Obviously I didn't want June to get away with it, but using mental illness as her downfall? Come on. Especially since at the end, it's implied that she still has a chance at a comeback. Rather than June's mental illness being exploited, someone could have just gotten ahold of the damning notebooks and revealed them to the world. That would have exposed June just as well while avoiding the questionable mental health rep.

This book could have done with being 100 pages shorter and with a better ending. R. F. Kuang may be a talented writer (although I'm not entirely convinced) but she's just not for me.

I'm going to finish by linking to this video that I thought explained a lot of my problems with Yellowface a lot better than I ever could.

So yeah. I'm done with R. F. Kuang. She is just not for me. Also, she needs to meet non-Parisian French people and get a better understanding of the country.