She is lonely, haunted, anxiety-ridden, defeated, jealous, envious, hateful, destructive, delusional- racist? Lovers of ‘the unreliable -almost mad- narrator’ will have a field day with this book, June Hayward is complex, messy and often anger-inducing giving us that blunt dark humour that has you reminding yourself ‘this is satirical, this is satirical, omg how do I crawl into this book and beat this white girl’s ass!’. Yellowface has an entirely different feel, written in first person present tense, it presents us with an intimate character study of our protagonist June Hayward, an unsuccessful young white writer whose frustrations in life (the relatable and the downright outrageous), are front and centre in the whole narrative.

Kuang fan, anything she’s written before! Kuang has jumped from fantasy/ alternate history to a satirical suspenseful contemporary fiction, across her past works (The Poppy War trilogy and Babel) she leads us through plot-heavy books with intricate worlds woven with exciting themes, all viewed through the distanced lens of the third person perspective, allowing us readers to speculate on what really is going on in the heads of our protagonists. Yellowface is so different from any book I’ve read, and speaking as an R.F.

Yellowface rebecca kuang