Book Club Review: Yellowface

RAD Book Club’s second read of the year was Yellowface, the 2023 novel by R. F. Kuang.

Described by The Guardian as “a hugely entertaining account of a brazen literary heist”, Yellowface follows June Hayward, a struggling author who, after witnessing the death of her friend and rival, Athena Liu, decides to steal Athena’s unfinished manuscript and pass it off as her own. What follows is a biting and often very funny satire of the publishing industry and a witty examination of cancel culture, plagiarism, cultural appropriation, social media politics, and more.

As a whole, the group really enjoyed the book. Although we thought it was a little on-the-nose, blunt, and implausible at times, we all found the prose and plot to be very engaging. We all read the book very quickly and found ourselves hooked up its style, humour, and narrative.

We particularly enjoyed Kuang’s depiction of June Hayward, the main character. We thought she was an excellently drawn and compelling anti-hero, and even though she was often infuriating and exasperating, this was part of her charm. There was a wicked irony to hearing June’s self-deluding defences of free speech and the right of anyone to tell any kind of story while also knowing that she had in fact stolen the story that made her so successful that we all found captivating.

We also all really enjoyed the complexity of the relationship between Athena and June. Later on in the novel we find out that Athena used a traumatic event from June’s life as the basis for an award-winning short story and June uses this as justification for her later theft. This element complicated what otherwise could have been quite a straightforward narrative and we found this aspect of the novel – its investigation into the ethics of writing and the question of who has the right to tell what story – fascinating.

We also agreed that the book’s engagement with social media politics was one of its strongest elements and that it did a great job of capturing the feeling of navigating the blizzard of online commentary and discourse.

Overall we all had very positive feelings about the book. Our average rating of Yellowface was 9/10.

Book Club will meet again on Thursday the 24 August 2023 at 13:15-14:00 in the library to discuss The Driver’s Seat by Scottish novelist Muriel Spark. A dark psychological thriller, The Driver’s Seat follows Lise, a disturbed and erratic woman on an ill-fated holiday in Southern Europe, and the various unsavoury characters she encounters along the way.