When was the last time you read an entire book in a day? For me, it was last Thursday.
I’ve been in a reading rut the last few months, and therefore jumping from book to book as I attempt to find the cure. After hearing a lot of buzz about a new satire of the publishing industry, I decided to set down my current unsatisfying read and pick it up. Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang, held my gaze for the rest of the day. I couldn’t put it down until I finally closed the cover way too late that night. Reading slump cured!
The story is simple: two young aspiring writers go through school together and enter the industry at the same time. One of them shoots to literary fame right out of the gate, while the other gets published, but barely. They remain friends out of convenience & proximity, one wildly jealous of the other’s success. One fateful night, the Star Author dies in a freak accident and our narrator decides to steal an unpublished manuscript, edit it heavily, and publish it under her own name. What spins out afterwards is the internal monologue of someone who has done something terrible—on so many levels—and a rip-roaring (and ruthless) ride through the author’s side of the publishing world.
What makes this so interesting is its insider knowledge and commentary on an industry going through significant growing pains surrounding diversity. The rising star who meets an untimely death is a Chinese-American woman, whose magnificent manuscript is a historical-fiction epic about the Chinese Labor Corps in World War I. The author who ends up publishing the manuscript is a white woman from Philadelphia, who until finding the novel knew nothing about the topic at hand.
Reading this book means watching the editing process, the marketing choices, and what happens in the publishing Twitterverse, all through the eyes of someone who has done something wrong and is trying to convince herself that she’s just helping her deceased friend to get her story out there. It’s riveting—the most interesting “thriller” I’ve read in ages. And while there is a death to start things off, there is no blood involved. Will June get caught in the act of plagiarism? Do the publishers even care if she actually wrote it, as long as she sells enough copies? Who has the right to tell a particular story? The entire novel is filled with emotional and psychological suspense, with so many layers to consider that it will keep your mind working long after the final page is read.
Those of us invested in the publishing world have been watching it attempt to grow and change to embrace and support diversity and eliminate gatekeeping. Kuang’s book serves to bring a lot of insider experience to light in a smart and approachable way. This book gives us something to dig into and discuss while being thoroughly entertained. Truly satire at its peak. I’ll be handing this out to everyone in months to come, and hoping to talk with you for hours once you’re done reading it.
Kari Meutsch and Kristian Preylowski co-own and run the Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock.