Review – Undying: A Love Story

Posted October 27, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Undying: A Love Story

Undying: A Love Story

by Michel Faber

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 144
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

How can you say goodbye to the love of your life?

In Undying Michel Faber honours the memory of his wife, who died after a six-year battle with cancer. Bright, tragic and candid, these poems are an exceptional chronicle of what it means to find the love of your life. And what it is like to have to say goodbye.

All I can do, in what remains of my brief time,
is mention, to whoever cares to listen,
that a woman once existed, who was kind
and beautiful and brave, and I will not forget
how the world was altered, beyond recognition,
when we met.

Michel Faber’s poetry collection, Undying: A Love Story, is composed of poems mostly written while his wife was dying and in the months after her death. It’s an intimate and pained portrait of a relationship and love that he idealises, and his grief is plain throughout the poems.

I didn’t love all of them, but as a collection, they do a lot — and there were definitely several that gave me serious pause.  There’s some vivid imagery and some lovely phrases, but most of all, there’s a lot of tenderness and appreciation of what the poet had, as well as grief at the passing. That more than the exact words is what sticks with me, as a reader.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 26, 2024 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

It’s the weekend, and I’m so glad for it. Much-needed from my point of view! And it’ll be slightly extended, as I’ll be off to the wedding of a friend from university this week. It’s exciting to be seeing everyone again!

So let’s try and get me into a good mood with lots of books and me-time, huh?

Books acquired this week

I went to the library twice this week (since I might not get down there at all next week, and I had a hold to pick up), so it’s a bit of a bumper crop. And my library card is now maxed out, oops! First the fiction:

Cover of What Moves The Dead, by T. Kingfisher Cover of What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher Cover of Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

Cover of Murder at the British Museum by Jim Eldridge Cover of Murder at the Ashmolean by Jim Eldridge Cover of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty Cover of Swordcrossed by Freya Marske

I actually had eARCs of What Feasts at Night and Sword Crossed, but I didn’t get round to them — ebooks can be a bit “out of sight, out of mind” for me, unfortunately. But now I’ve read both already, and either way now the library knows people are interested in these authors!

I did also find some non-fiction, some of it from my wishlist:

Cover of Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind by Richard Fortey Cover of Saints by Amy Jeffs Cover of Eighteen by Alice Loxton Cover of Digging For Richard III by Mike Pitts

So that was a lovely haul.

I did also get a couple of books from my wife. I haven’t been “cashing in” my Valentine’s gift (a book of my choice each month) for a couple of months, so after I finished Wormwood Abbey, I asked for the next two books:

Cover of Drake Hall by Christina Baehr Cover of Castle of the Winds by Christina Baehr

And that’s it, for now. As if that wasn’t enough, ahaha.

Posts from this week

First, the reviews, as usual:

And the non-reviews:

What I’m reading

Well, let’s start first with the books I’ve finished since last week, or at least the ones I’m going to review here:

Cover of Murder at the Fitzwilliam by Jim Eldridge Cover of Wormwood Abbey by Christina Baehr Cover of Rose/House by Arkady Martine Cover of A Man and His God by Janet Morris

Cover of What Moves The Dead, by T. Kingfisher Cover of Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud Cover of The Bookshop, the Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street by Annie Gray Cover of Digging For Richard III by Mike Pitts Cover of What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

As you see, it’s been a pretty good week, with some spooky reads as well (unusual for me). For the weekend, I plan to read some manga/manhua, but also hopefully start on Christina Baehr’s Drake Hall, and possibly finally get started on Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop.

…Probably. As always, I’ll be going based on whatever my random whim tells me.

Finally, just a reminder for folks in the UK that Bookshop.org’s Golden Bookmark competition is drawing toward the closing date. The competition is a prize draw for £250 of book vouchers per year for life. You can sign up via my referral link to enter! Full disclosure: that gets me a few extra entries, and then you’ll be able to grab your own referral link to share.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

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Review – The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy

Posted October 25, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens -- And Ourselves

by Arik Kershenbaum

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 368
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

We are unprepared for the greatest discovery of modern science. Scientists are confident that there is alien life across the universe yet we have not moved beyond our perception of 'aliens' as Hollywood stereotypes. The time has come to abandon our fixation on alien monsters and place our expectations on solid scientific footing.

Using his own expert understanding of life on Earth and Darwin's theory of evolution - which applies throughout the universe - Cambridge zoologist Dr Arik Kershenbaum explains what alien life must be like. This is the story of how life really works, on Earth and in space.

The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Arik Kershenbaum, attempts to guess what alien life might look like by working from what we know. It seems to generally be focused on the more exciting side of things, with what alien animals might look like, and especially what alien intelligence might look like — though I think simpler life (equivalent to bacteria and archaea) is more likely to be found in a variety of places, with multicellular life being rarer, and intelligent life rarer still. But obviously you have to go with what people are interested in, and zoology isn’t known for in-depth interest in microbiology anyway.

As I’ve said elsewhere (and it’s not too surprising), overall there weren’t many surprises for me, given I have a biology degree and a pre-existing interest in astrobiology from fiction and non-fiction. I found that I didn’t always agree with Kershenbaum’s reasoning, but it was interesting.

As far as his reasoning went, I felt that he focused a bit too much on positive selection of beneficial traits, and it felt like he over-emphasised the idea that traits (both physical and behavioural) must be advantageous in order to be maintained through generations. Of course, that’s a large part of it, but neutral traits and behaviours can come along for the ride because they’re not selected against (and of course negative traits can come along because they’re advantageous in narrow but important circumstances, though he does touch on this in discussing traits that demonstrate fitness).

To explain what I mean, I’d be very wary of claiming that there must be an evolutionary advantage to, say, a percentage of the population being attracted to very young children — but that is a persistent trait of humans, unfortunately. If it has a grounds in heredity, then it must be either a trait that’s neutral, evolutionarily speaking, or one which is positive under a narrow set of circumstances — which it may well be, but do we really want to sit around debating how paedophilia might be good, actually? I don’t think it’s terribly appropriate to consider paedophilia to be necessarily adaptive because it’s a behaviour that exists (and persists), and likewise there are other features of appearance, behaviour and function that are complicated. Other types of child abuse, for instance.

Reckoning with something so heavy is beyond the scope of the book, but hopefully that makes it clear that it’s not a great idea to put all your faith in the idea that every trait must be adaptive. It’s important to remember the existence of negative and neutral traits which come along for the ride.

My other quibbles are related: one would be that Kershenbaum spent quite a lot of words on suggesting innovative and strange forms life might take, only to conclude quickly that no, they’re not likely, and most likely we’ll meet lifeforms that look quite like us.

The other is the stupid “tape of life” analogy. We cannot “rewind the tape of life”, so we cannot know whether things would turn out the same if we did so. (Plus a tape is a bad analogy for what they actually mean: no matter how you rewind it, it’s still going to play the same content when you press play, because a tape has pre-determined content on it.) It’s a thought experiment, not a truth about the world. I believe there have been some experiments that try to test the theory by sampling from a colony of bacteria at the same time and seeing whether each then develops in the same way — but then talk about those, instead, and what they mean for your theory, don’t just take “the tape of life” metaphor and run with it despite its manifest flaws. It’s a thought experiment, not a fact.

Obviously I’m being pretty nitpicky here, and overall I found it interesting and enjoyable (if sometimes a bit repetitive). For a layperson, it’s probably a perfectly fine level of simplification.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Umbrella Academy, vol 1

Posted October 24, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Umbrella Academy, vol 1

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite

by Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba, Dave Stewart, Nate Piekos

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction
Pages: 184
Series: The Umbrella Academy #1
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

In an inexplicable worldwide event, forty-three extraordinary children were spontaneously born to women who'd previously shown no signs of pregnancy. Millionaire inventor Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven of the children; when asked why, his only explanation was, "To save the world." These seven children form the Umbrella Academy, a dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre powers. Their first adventure at the age of ten pits them against an erratic and deadly Eiffel Tower, piloted by the fearsome zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel. Nearly a decade later, the team disbands, but when Hargreeves unexpectedly dies, these disgruntled siblings reunite just in time to save the world once again.

I thought I’d give Gerard Way’s The Umbrella Academy a shot, though I didn’t know anything about it other than that there’s a Netflix(?) series, and I kinda liked the violin-woman design on the cover.

It’s… a bit of a mess, to be honest; there are some interesting character designs, but it jumps around, motivations aren’t clear, characters don’t really have coherent arcs, etc, etc. The idea of taking a bunch of “special” kids and training them to fight/unlock their powers/etc is a classic, but barely really used here; why they’re so dysfunctional, alluded to but barely touched on; the whole situation for Vanya, nope…

I don’t really get it, overall. Though I still think the violin-body design is astounding to look at.

Rating: 1/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted October 23, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Wednesday again, huh? Then it’s time for the usual update.

Cover of What Moves The Dead, by T. KingfisherWhat have you recently finished reading?

Last night I finished up reading What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher, which was very good. I loved that it added a lot of flesh onto the bones of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, and also the whole character of Easton: the pronouns, the Ruritanian romance details, etc, etc. I’m pretty late to the party on reading it because the process of reading it involves mentally tiptoeing around things that could trigger my anxiety and send me off to wash my hands eleventy-billion times, but so does my entire MSc, so I’m well-versed in coping with that by now.

I also recently finished Arkady Martine’s Rose/House, which I’d been curious about for a while and which seems to be now getting a wider release, for which I got an eARC. It’s described in a way that makes it sound like an SF mystery, but I feel it too owes more than a little to horror. I enjoyed it a lot.

Cover of The Bookshop, the Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street by Annie GrayWhat are you currently reading?

I’m most of the way through The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker, by Annie Gray. I don’t entirely love the format (of imagining yourself into the high streets of yore with a shopping list), and feel like I might’ve liked a differently-organised version of the same information (e.g. chapters themed around a particular kind of shop through time, rather than each chapter covering a time period and jumbling everything together like a shopping trip) — but I’m enjoying it well enough for what it is.

In my efforts to read everything Serial Reader has by Agatha Christie, I’m onto The Secret of Chimneys, which I dimly remember starting at some other point and not finishing. I don’t know what I think of it yet, but I don’t think I’m a big fan.

Cover of The Witness for the Dead by Katherine AddisonWhat will you read next?

There are no certainties in my reading life, since I’m strongly driven by whim, but I’m still thinking of rereading Katherine Addison’s books set in the world of The Goblin Emperor — I just haven’t decided if I’ll reread that again first, or only reread the books where Thara Celehar is the main lead. Either way, it’ll lead into reading the ARC of the third book, in which I dearly hope someone has the gumption to hug Thara Celehar and then possibly tuck him into bed with a friendly cat and firm instructions to rest.

How about you?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Reading Habits Over Time

Posted October 22, 2024 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about how your reading habits have changed over time, which is interesting to ponder.

  1. I read a lot more non-fiction. It’s a shift I never expected, because I wasn’t that interested in non-fiction when I was younger, but year by year the percentage inches up. At the moment about a third of what I read is non-fiction.
  2. I don’t really enjoy YA anymore. There’s a lot of good stuff out there and I might still give it a shot here and there, but many themes just don’t speak to me as much. And that’s fine: at this stage in my life, it’s definitely not aimed at me!
  3. I don’t believe in “guilty pleasures”. I try not to value-judge any genre. Reading is meant to be fun, for me, not some kind of moral duty to read “improving” literature — or even stuff that is necessarily “good”.
  4. I used to read straight through books more than I do now. Same with series. Part of that is the shift in genres: non-fiction, for example, can really benefit from taking a step back to let yourself sort through the information.
  5. I used to reread books even more than I do now. These days I try not to read books too often, because then the gaps can start to show, or it just becomes too familiar-the same way you can autopilot through a familiar area when walking or driving.
  6. I think I’m more influenced by other reviewers’ opinions than I used to be. If I loved a book that someone I trust hated, or vice versa, I worry that I’m being weird! I try to notice that feeling, but I’m sure it still affects me at times. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because it prompts me to think something through… but sometimes I don’t feel very in touch with what I enjoyed.
  7. I probably read less than I did. In a way it’s not surprising — I’m not studying for a degree in English Lit anymore, and I’m both studying and have a full-time job. But it might be surprising to hear given how many books I do read!
  8. I used to be quite picky about where I stopped reading: it had to be the end of a chapter, or at least a scene break. I know, this one’s a bit more niche and precise! But I really used to find it impossible to put down a book unless I was at a “good” stopping-point. I’m a lot more flexible now.
  9. I don’t read in bed anymore. It’s bad sleep hygiene and also it’s not that comfy! I like to be sat upright, with my feet on something to bring my knees up closer to my chest.
  10. I probably read shorter books these days. It’s an attention span thing, and also — no matter now I try to avoid this happening — a sense of pressure about completing reading goals, having reviews to post, etc.

Alright, that’s it for me for now — how about you?

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Review – Out of the Drowning Deep

Posted October 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Out of the Drowning Deep

Out of the Drowning Deep

by A.C. Wise

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction
Pages: 176
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

In the distant future, when mortals mingle with the gods in deep space, an out-of-date automaton, a recovering addict, and an angel race to solve the Pope’s murder in an abandoned corner of the galaxy.

Dreamy, beautifully written queer science-fantasy novella, for fans of Becky Chambers and This is How You Lose the Time War.

Scribe IV is an obsolete automaton living on the Bastion, a secluded monastery in an abandoned corner of the galaxy. When the visiting Pope is found murdered, Scribe IV knows he has very little time before the terrifying Sisters of the Drowned Deep rise up to punish all the Bastion’s residents for their supposed crime.

Quin, a recovering drug addict turned private investigator, agrees to take the case. Traumatized by a
bizarre experience in his childhood, Quin repeatedly feeds his memories to his lover, the angel Murmuration. But fragmented glimpses of an otherworldly horror he calls the crawling dark continue to haunt his dreams.

Meanwhile in heaven, an angel named Angel hears Scribe IV’s prayer. Intrigued by the idea of solving a crime with mortals, xe descends to offer xyr divine assistance.

With the Drowned Sisters closing in, Scribe IV, Quin, and Angel race to find out who really murdered the Pope, and why. Quin’s missing memories may hold the key to the case - but is remembering worth what it will cost him?

I had to sit with A.C. Wise’s Out of the Drowning Deep for a while to digest it, because I didn’t have any immediate coherent thoughts. I liked it a lot: the science-fantasy setting, the mystery, the idea of Scribe IV, and the complex darkness of the relationship between Quin and Murmuration. It felt like there was so much more going on around the edges of the story that the characters operated within: the way faith could make gods, and what gods are then, and what the Bastion is for, what the Bastion is like from other eyes… Fascinating.

For those looking for a murder mystery set within a science-fantasy setting, I can see it being pretty unsatisfying, though, because the mystery itself is more of a backdrop to the exploration of faith and addiction, to exploring the dynamic between Quin and Murmuration, and what Angel might want and decide to do. The mystery’s a fairly simple one, and there’s not a lot of time spent on unravelling it, even though it’s the cause for some of the movements of the plot.

I went into it fairly blind, just knowing I’d come across a review by someone who’d liked it, that it was a novella, and the library had stocked it, so I just took a chance, and found it fascinating. I’d love to have dug a bit deeper into Scribe IV’s evolving purpose, because it felt like he was left rather static at the end… but that’s a small point that isn’t even really a complaint.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Precious

Posted October 20, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Precious

Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time

by Helen Molesworth

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 316
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Travelling through moments in history and layers of soil and sediment, this is world history as you have never seen it before.

This is the story of precious gems, from emeralds and rubies, to sapphires and pearls. Explore their history and geology, as well as their famous owners, from Elizabeth 1 to Elizabeth Taylor, Marie Antoinette to Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel to Beyonce.

Discover the fragile emerald watch that survived cross-continental journeys and centuries under the floorboards of a London house.

Journey back through the generations of women who wore pearls as a signifier of femininity and marvel at the role these glistening objects have played in changing depictions of feminism.

Learn of the Burmese warriors who believed so strongly in the connection between rubies and lifeblood that they embedded them into their skin before battle to protect them from harm.

In this sumptuous and sweeping history of humanity's love affair with jewels, the V&A’s Senior Jewellery Curator, Helen Molesworth, takes you behind the curtain of museums and auction houses, showcasing some of history's most incredible and iconic jewels and the deeply human stories that lie behind them.

Helen Molesworth obviously loves jewels, and discusses some of the very famous ones she’s had the chance to handle during her career in Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time. While ostensibly a history of gemstones, it’s also quite personal, with Molesworth discussing her connection to the gems or places where gems are mined, and making her experience quite clear. She’s handled So-And-So’s very famous jewels, you know! And these ones too!

I wasn’t so interested in her autobiography through gems, but where she does discuss the formation of gems and the history of how we’ve seen and used gems, it is interesting. And it’s not that I necessarily dislike someone having a personal connection to the topics they write about, and learning from someone’s experience can be interesting — it just feels like there’s a lot of namedropping, both of famous people and famous gems.

It was definitely a more satisfying read than Lapidarium (Hettie Judah) and went a bit more in depth. I found it compelling enough to read it quite quickly — really, it’s mostly in retrospect I’m rolling my eyes a little at the namedropping.

One good feature is the two sets of colour pages showing off photos of the gems. That helps, as I’ve never been that interested, and thus hadn’t seen some of the famous pieces described before. It gives a bit of context.

Rating: 3/5

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 19, 2024 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

Good morning folks! My achievement this week is that I’m finally back on top of my email inbox, and today I’m tackling my tab backlog. That hopefully means more timely comments going forward, now things are a bit more under control. (Hopefully.)

Books acquired this week

As usual now, I made a library trip on Monday, so here are my spoils!

Cover of Overleaf by Susan & Richard Ogilvy Cover of The Book Makers by Adam Smyth

Cover of Cold Snap by Lindy Ryan Cover of Murder at the Fitzwilliam by Jim Eldridge Cover of The Sad Ghost Club by Lize Meddings

I’ve been digging into those already — in fact, I’ve finished three, I’m partway through Murder at the Fitzwilliam, and it’s just The Book Makers left untouched.

I did also get a book via my British Library Crime Classics subscription, as usual, and two books for review via Netgalley.

Cover of Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth Anthony Cover of Rose/House by Arkady Martine Cover of The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

I won’t be reading a Christmas mystery yet, but I had a fun time doing so last year during December, so I’ll look forward to that. As for the ARCs, I’ve been curious about Rose/House for a while, but it wasn’t available in the UK, so glad to pick that up! I wasn’t personally as in love with This Is How You Lose The Time War as others, but I’m curious about The River Has Roots all the same.

Reviews posted this week

As usual, let’s have the review roundup!

And just one non-review post:

What I’m reading

It’s been a good reading week, but quite a few books I won’t review here (like my rereads of Record of a Spaceborn Few and The Galaxy and the Ground Within). As ever, here’s a sneak peak of the books I finished and will be reviewing here — sooner or later, anyway.

Cover of The Hunter by Richard Stark Cover of The Mountain in the Sea by Ray NaylerCover of Overleaf by Susan & Richard Ogilvy

Cover of Cold Snap by Lindy Ryan Cover of The Sad Ghost Club by Lize Meddings Cover of The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

As for what I’ll be reading this weekend… first I’m going to finish up with Murder at the Fitzwilliam, for sure. After that, I’m probably just going to follow a whim. I’d like to finish up Wormwood Abbey (Christina Baehr), so I can decide if I want to read the rest of the series, and I’m thinking of making a start on Alexis Hall’s Mortal Follies. I’ll probably pick up some non-fiction as well, though, since I like to have some variety. I’m going to keep it fairly chilled out, in any case, as I just got my flu vaccine this morning.

So that’s me for the week! How’s everyone else doing?

ETA: Oh, for those in the UK, here’s an opportunity! Bookshop.org are running a “Golden Bookmark” draw, through which you may win free books for life. Sadly not unlimited free books, but £250 a year for as long as Bookshop.org exists isn’t bad, right? Go on, sign up, you know you want to. (Full disclosure: if you use my referral link, I get some extra entries. You can then get your own referral link… or pass mine on to others, whichever you prefer!)

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

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Review – Yellowface

Posted October 18, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 5 Comments

Review – Yellowface

Yellowface

by Rebecca F. Kuang

Genres: General
Pages: 323
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

What’s the harm in a pseudonym? Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author R. F. Kuang in the vein of White Ivy and The Other Black Girl.

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

Have you ever been riveted by the Main Character on a given social media platform on a given day? Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface is basically like that, with a lot of recognisable elements if you follow affairs in the publishing world. The narrator, Juniper, is as unreliable as they come, and as convinced of her rightness as any Main Character: it’s okay that she plagiarised her dead friend’s work, because her friend would’ve wanted her to, and anyway, she’s changed it so much that it’s her work now.

Really, Yellowface is reckoning with issues that keep on rippling through publishing, about #OwnVoices and representation, about the representation of minorities in publishing houses, about people being treated as just the minority they represent — and more. It’s obviously written by someone who is a part of that world, and the description of the book as a satire is an accurate one. Kuang is imagining what someone like Juniper Song Hayward might think and do, the justifications they might make, while turning it all up to eleven to show us how self-serving it can be.

And the thing is, it doesn’t even feel exaggerated to me. There are definitely Juniper Haywards in the publishing world, and they come out of the woodwork on places like Twitter all the time. These are beliefs that people really have. It’s not a biography, of course, and you can’t see the fingerprints of any one single particular incident on it, but it’s still so recognisable.

There’s nobody very likeable in this book, of course, and you can feel the inevitable crash coming, which made it a bit of a difficult read for me; it’s not really in my comfort zone, I suppose, even though generally I like reading a bit of everything. It’s also very clear about the serious mental health impact on Juniper — one can still have a little sympathy for her even though she’s brought it on herself, or at least, one can if one’s also spent time too anxious to eat, too anxious to think, obsessing over a pile-on somewhere or other (in my case, nothing at the same scale or severity; I’m just an anxious mess about any conflict and get anxious if someone didn’t like my fanfic or a friend misread my tone, but that doesn’t stop it being recognisable). There’s no conclusion there about how to deal with the pile-ons that can happen in this kind of situation, and no sympathy for Juniper’s actions, but nonetheless it does make it clear there’s a serious impact on her. Even if you deserve it, that situation is awful.

Because the whole thing is written from Juniper’s point of view and in Juniper’s voice, it’s not always easy to tell whether something is part of the story and part of Juniper’s unsteady view of the world, or whether it’s something non-deliberate by Kuang: sometimes it feels like things about the publishing and editing process are under or over explained, depending on who the target audience is supposed to be. That could just be Juniper, not sure what kind of audience she’s speaking to and trying to fling her net wide to make sure all kinds of people understand her attempt at self-exculpation — or it could be Kuang, not sure whether the audience is keeping pace with what’s going on for Juniper and what it means.

It’s not entirely clear from the first-person present tense narrative whether this is meant to be the manuscript Juniper produces at the end: probably not, because of the present tense and some of the detail (which wouldn’t, I think, be self-exculpating enough to be her work of justification and striking back), but then what? Who is she speaking to? Is this her internal monologue, and if so, why would she need to (for example) define what an “ARC” is?

For my enjoyment overall it’s a minor quibble, but I’ve found myself often wondering about first-person narrators: who are they telling their story to and why? And I’m not quite sure I know with Juniper. In the end, it feels most like she’s telling the story to herself, ready to work it over and pick out the bones of it that most support her view of herself as the victim.

Of course, because Kuang is not just writing for chronically online people who have been watching controversies of the publishing world for two decades, she doesn’t ultimately have much choice: these things need to be defined and explained, so ultimately those bits that slightly stuck out to me were necessary somehow or other.

All in all, Yellowface was a fascinating read, and an unflattering mirror to some of the things that happen on social media and, indeed, in publishing. Juniper’s a fascinatingly flawed narrator, showing off all our human weaknesses of self-justification and making you think — yeesh, I hope I’m not that oblivious to my own flaws…

Rating: 5/5

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