Title: Yellowface
Author: Rebecca Kuang
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 312
Rating: 4.5/5
The first thing to mention here is that I picked this up from a charity shop, not realising that it was an uncorrected proof copy that the publishers had sent out to bloggers. I found that to be kind of ironic, given that proof copies are mentioned within the book itself.
The plot here revolves around an unlikeable protagonist who’s an unsuccessful writer with a very successful friend. When her friend passes away in a freak accident, she seizes the opportunity to seize something else, nicking her unpublished masterpiece of a novel and then publishing it herself.
What’s interesting is that we can see how a series of small decisions ultimately leads to a huge fraud. To begin with, she’s telling herself that she’s just going to tidy up the novel because it’s still a first draft, and then she figures that she’s done so much work on it herself that it’s not really lying if she claims it as her own work, is it?
Well yeah, it is, and that’s kind of the point of the novel. With it, Kuang explores two different areas that obviously have a deep significance for her.
The first is the publishing industry itself, along with some of the dodgy things that happen behind the scenes and some of the politics that are at play when writers an editors get together and start schmoozing. She nails the publishing industry in the same way that Taylor Jenkins Reid nailed the music industry in Daisy Jones and the Six.
But the second is the main point of this novel, and that’s the hijacking of Asian culture by westerners. In fact, the title comes from a term for when people use makeup to make themselves look more Asian.
A cracking read.
