I'm very late to this party but what a wild party it is. For those living under a rock, Yellowface is R.F. Kuang's satire of the publishing industry following June (aka Juniper Song) who steals the manuscript from her frenemy Athena after she dies in a freak accident and decides to pass of the story of Chinese migrant labourers in WWI as her own.

Being in June's head for 300 pages was both unbearable but also undeniably engaging. There are so many opportunities for June to course correct that her ego and/or sense of entitlement and/or misguided belief in her own talent means that she refuses to change direction, ultimately building to the novel's finale.

Much of the content of Yellowface will be familiar to anyone who spends time on the literary internet - references to twitter accounts, YouTubers and review sites abound within the pages of the book. There were times when I couldn't quite grasp whether Kuang was using the pages of the novel to work out her own frustrations with criticism of her work which occasionally felt a bit uncomfortable as a reader. Athena felt a little too close to Kuang as a person for her portrayal to be as authentic as it could have been - we know she's privileged but aside from June constantly mentioning this, and a Twitter thread that is treated as suitably unhinged, we don't really unpack how she managed to break into the industry. I did also spot the likely 'antagonist' (from June's perspective) a mile off, which meant that the reveal at the end lost some of its punch.

Kuang is astute with her take on who gets to tell what stories, and she does this within a darkly comic story. She is such a great talent - to write as wide-ranging novels as Babel and Yellowface is remarkable and I'm eagerly awaiting her next work.