Face

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It perfectly executes a change in character for Martin, who you go from having a distaste to, to supporting every step of his lifechanging journey. The pacing is excellent as well, with events naturally following on from one another - whilst never lingering on certain situations for too long. Constantly remaining engaging and new with each chapter.

Overall, this realistic and thrilling read left me feeling anxious and evoked a multitude of emotions including fear, hate, and sadness. It successfully accomplished its mission of shaking the reader to their core and provoking deep thoughts that linger for days. The essence of a masterpiece lies in its ability to challenge readers and evoke a range of feelings, and this book achieves just that. There are books with characters that have issues, and issue books that have characters. This is the former, so it totally worked for me. After this, Hayward steals Liu's manuscript about Chinese laborers forcefully conscripted by the French during World War 1. The caucasity is unsurprising, trite, and racist covering all the beats we experienced every time we covered Discourse about films like The Blindside, Hidden Figures Greenbook, and books like The Help, or American Dirt.

which was a big thing that irked me with tpw. people would make criticisms of rfk's narrative choices and plot points and the response would be ‘well, rin is an unreliable narrator!’ yes, but there is such thing as framing and context which are important things to consider when trying to figure out what an author actually is saying, intentionally or not. but anyways.)

The book is set in a fairly ethnically-diverse area of London and—before his accident—Martin is relatively prejudiced towards the majority of people who are different to him. As a white male, Martin had not really come across any level of adversity in his life until he was scarred, but after he finds life more challenging. His friends begin to drift away from him, his girlfriend leaves him and, generally, people start treating him differently because of the way he looks with the burns. I did like his friends from after the accident the Jamaican sisters and Anthony. I thought that they were interesting and unique characters and I would have loved to learn more about them.Is this book satire? Obviously and not quite so much. 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. Most reviewers have noticed the central themes in Yellowface rearing their ugly head in the real world, especially in the past few years, so it is refreshing and exhilarating to read a fictional novel encompassing these issues in a way that only R.F. Kuang could create. Helio recalls a time before the accident, when he was living with Lula and enjoying their romantic comradeship. He is talking idly with his mistress when a telegram comes from Rio Piedras, the remote town in the country that he had left years ago for the large, impersonal city of Rio de Janeiro. The telegram reveals that his mother is dying.

In conclusion, an amazing foray into general fiction by R.F. Kuang. I swear this woman can do no wrong. Give her whatever topic to write about and I bet she can create something incredible out of the most boring premise. I think it's impressive how she took these modern controversies and wrote them into a twisty unputdownable story. It seems to me like it's a new experiment from her but at the same time a really smart jab at publishing too. this was like reading the diary entry of someone who has just had an extremely bad day at work. it was like that trope that seems for some reason very exclusive to the mid-2000s in which people have the worst day of their lives are doomed to relive it, or die and go to purgatory or something like that enjoyed a specific renaissance in spirit in this book. i’ve decided not to include any quotes from the book and talk in general terms with minor details to avoid spoilers (not anything that’s not in the premise, anyway), but i’m still talking about how i felt about different parts of the book, including the middle and end, even though I won’t be talking about what happens in them. so if you want to go in blind, beware. i know this runs the risk of me describing something one way, but then you going and reading it and interpreting a different way, but until it actually comes out and i can drop the ‘extended’ (and hopefully more sophisticated) review, this will have to do. This book takes Babel and continues to flip the script. June Hayward, a white American woman struggling to become an author, is frenemies with Athena Liu, publishing darling. June continues to state time and time again that Athena is only famous because she is a minority. How many times have we heard this? I really wanted to like this book. The cover is good and thought provoking and the concept behind it was really interesting. I feel like if it had been executed better this book could have been brilliant. Unfortunately it wasn't.The first problem I had was with Martin and his two friends called Matthew and Mark, it took me until the accident to be able to differentiate between the two of them and at that point they became much small characters. While they seemed like they could have been more interesting it also seemed as though they were assigned one character trait and that was the whole basis of who they were. Little depth was given to them. Discover creators, small businesses and communities who can help you dive deeper into the things you care about This book does bring up some interesting points around who gets to tell certain stories and plagiarism. It all boils down to self-interest…If publishing is rigged, you might as well make sure it's rigged in your favor.’ The other characters are additionally well written - with their portrayals remaining relatable throughout, thanks to Zephaniah's realistic youth dialogue. Fleshing out a very clear world these young characters live in, with the change in dialogue between speaking with their child counterparts and adults conveying an accurate fictional narrative, within a non-fictional setting.

Remarkably, I found myself attached to a book despite disliking the main character. At times, I wished I could physically enter the story and confront June Hayward/ Juniper Song, who committed the ultimate crime: stealing her late friend Athena Liu's unpublished book. The reasons behind this act of creative theft are complex and include jealousy, thirst for power, honoring her friend's work in the best way possible, and seeking personal gain. It is a tale that explores unfairness, harbored resentment, and a thirst for karmic justice. it's now 2023. in short, the ending is less a bang, and more of a whimper. rfk rules out a geoff-style ending for june, someone who disappears quietly from public memory after the scandal and becomes old news. she's too attached to athena's image. this is the right choice--june is too much of a villain-protagonist to get an unearned, 'soft' ending at the end of this. but then the 'crash-and-burn' ending needed to be a lot more to be satisfying for me. we get hallucinations, suicidal ideation, her isolating herself from her support network, all of this building and building and building--and then it goes...This is not an unfamiliar premise. So, what makes this story different? June’s voice. She’s funny, snarky, and totally without morals. She’s a literary psychopathic Jane Doe/Joe (thriller readers , you know who I’m talking about!) who can justify anything she does. She's unlikable, which is the author's intent. So even though I didn’t agree with all of Kuang’s satirical commentary in Yellowface (e.g., I think Asian Americans should be asked hard, critical questions about glorifying whiteness both in dating partners and in other areas of life), I respect that she seized a popular topic in the publishing industry and made a novel out of it. The exaggerated nature of satire doesn’t always lend itself to a deeper emotional connection with the characters or the story, though I don’t think a deep emotional connection is necessarily the point of this novel. Overall, while I don’t see this novel breaking into my top ten list at the end of this year, I found it an interesting read and one that may be fun to discuss.