Yellowface: The instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick from author R.F. Kuang

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But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. While I’ve enjoyed Kuang’s writing previously, Yellowface feels very polished and matured, the novel reading with the ease and eagerness of a tell-all memoir, which is the framing of the story.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang | Goodreads

Her self-insert is actually with Athena, the main character's college friend turned renowned author. people would make criticisms of rfk's narrative choices and plot points and the response would be ‘well, rin is an unreliable narrator! So while through her telling many of the critiques are cast as villains, the fictional journalist Adele Sparks-Sato (a nod to Andrea Long Chu as Vartika pointed out) is not wrong when writing that June’s version of Athena’s novel ‘ joins novels like The Help and The Good Earth in a long line of what I dub historical exploitation novels: inauthentic stories that use troubled pasts as an entertaining set piece for white entertainment.more than anything, it felt like the author was using the main character to respond to real life criticism she’s received, which isn’t inherently bad, but it made the story feel a bit shallow. Loneliness and the desperate desire for recognition serve as driving forces, pushing the protagonist to extreme measures. the belief that her haters are racist comes in a distant second to the belief that her haters are jealous—of her success, of her telegenic prettiness, of her comfortable life.

Yellowface – HarperCollins Publishers UK

I will see it in Texas at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra next week, but the final stop is at the Royal Albert Hall in October. in tpw i excused it as a debut author's mistake, while in babel i found her passion about the themes charming— but here in yellowface i realize that rfk is unfortunately incapable of separating her own voice from the text, which is very grating to my brain. i know rfk intended the characters to be unlikeable, but i did not root for them at any point of the book. Maybe I am not the key demographic for this book (I'm in the over 35 crowd), but how I approach social media is like Marie Kondo - if it doesn't spark joy, I get rid of it. What I mean is, it’s clearly satire, but to an extent that these characters are not exact flesh and blood, but the issues discussed in this book are far from farcical.so, a little too “real world” for my personal reading preferences, but there is no doubt this is a provocative novel that sheds light on various aspects of the book world. Some people will prefer a female friendship story where race dynamics are explored (The Hate U Give), or perhaps they will want a thriller involving authors and books (Too Close To Home by Linwood Barclay), a meta narrative about who gets to tell a story (Bad Art Friend), a serial plagiariser (look up Jumi Bello), or Asian American nonfiction (Minor Feelings) and Rebecca can pick her next project.