“People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. Jealousy is the spike in my heartrate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter”

Yellowface is the fifth novel by award-winning, best-selling Chinese author and translator, Rebecca F Kuang. Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu take many of the same classes at Yale, but after that, their paths diverge. Athena, as June sees it, is a beautiful, Yale-educated, international, ambiguously queer woman of colour who, by the age of twenty-seven, has three best-sellers under her belt and has just scored a Netflix contract. June is just a plain, straight white girl from Philly: her one novel tanked, and she’s tutoring rich kids for the SAT to make rent.

While they basically have only skin-deep friendship, more a product of proximity than connection, Athena invites June to celebrate with her. That includes a lot of whiskey and, in the ensuing silliness, despite June’s best efforts, Athena chokes to death. The only copy of her just-finished manuscript, sitting there on Athena’s desk, is too much temptation for June, who puts it in her bag and takes it home.

June works quite hard on turning this first draft into a publishable work, and she quickly begins to believe her own justifications for doing so. Her agent is impressed and lines up an enthusiastic publisher. The advance is generous. Her editor suggests some changes to make the book less confronting, but that also soften Anthea’s strong stance on this difficult topic. June readily agrees: she firmly believes that “Reading should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore”

Because the book is about the treatment of Chinese laborers fighting on the side of the British in World War One, and June is not Chinese, she decides on a pseudonym using her middle name: Juniper Song, hoping to bypass the touchy issue of cultural authenticity mentioned by her publisher. She also rejects outright having a sensitivity reader check the manuscript.

The Last Front hits the New York Times bestseller list and June is enjoying the sort of recognition that Athena had. And then, allegations of plagiarism hit the Twittersphere. Is this the end of June’s career in writing?

There’s a delicious irony in a Chinese author writing a white protagonist who has appropriated a Chinese woman’s work to pass off as her own. Kuang explores the vexed question of cultural appropriation, touching on morally grey areas such as who has the right to write about what. Racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are all aired, and she does it all with such eloquent prose.

Her characters are complex and flawed, and neither June nor Athena is particularly likeable, but Kuang somehow gets the reader totally invested in June’s fate: will she get away with it? Do we want her to?

Kuang gives the reader a compelling insight into the publishing industry, and demonstrates the huge influence that social media can have. She also throws in a dramatic climax. This is a twisty tale that’s hard to put down: clever and thought-provoking, polarising and often darkly funny.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Harper Collins.