Rebecca F. Kuang, Yellowface.

 

- Rebecca F Kuang has written an absorbing, fast paced story about the inner workings of the publishing industry. It's soaked in detail and is forensic in its exploration of everything good and everything bad about blockbuster publishing and the dramas involving agents, authors, executives, editors, marketing and publicity staff, royalty advances, and reviewers. 

- Kuang is very familiar with this universe, and it shows, over and over again. 

- June (Juniper Song Hayward) steals Athena Lui’s manuscript from her study before Athena dies, polishes it and submits it as her own. It's titled The Last Front, and is about Chinese workers who were sent by the British army to labour camps on the front line during World War 1. Their stories were mostly tragic. Notice that June is a white woman and Athena Asian. That is a critical element in the unfolding drama. 

- The novel is particularly excellent on the editorial and publicity aspects. The long production process is outlined in exquisite and accurate detail - the texts, emails, the late night phone calls, etc. It's high drama all the way.  

- Candice, a young, woefully underpaid of course, editorial assistant, who is Asian, raises the question in a meeting as to whether June is writing ‘outside her lane', particularly when she resists a ‘sensitivity read’. She also doubts whether June is the genuine author. Candice is ignored, and eventually let go. 

- The novel is published, receives mostly excellent reviews, and becomes an international bestseller. 

- It doesn't take long however for highly critical reviews in non-mainstream and social media, mainly Twitter, to emerge. Kuang thrusts us into the whole, very emotional ‘white saviour’ debate, and the labelling of June as a racist. Former bestsellers like The Help and American Dirt are referenced. Their authors, Kathryn Stockett and Jeanine Cummins, were attacked remorselessly for abject racism. 

- Contrary to her publisher's fears, the negative press doesn't effect the book's sales. In fact they increase because right wing commentators, particularly on Fox news, rail against June's ‘cancellation'. 

- The novel brings all the threads together at the end in a surprising but very satisfactory way. 

- Well worth a read.