Rebecca F. Kuang
Audible 8h 38m
NO SPOILERS!
This book has lots of really positive reviews and I was looking forward to reading it. It’s certainly trending as I’ve seen the eye-catching cover peering out from every bookstore window display, and it’s stacked at the front of every airport WH Smith’s (other book vendors are available) that I’ve been in this summer.
The book is an amazing (truthful?) insight into the world of publishing and how we, the general book reading public are led by the nose through our book purchasing choices via social media and the decisions made in the editors’ offices at the beginning of a book’s journey.
Am I the only person who queries just how many books are plugged as the ‘Best Seller’ before it’s even become a fixture in the windows of the aforementioned vendors? How do they know it’ll become a best seller when nobody has had the chance to read it yet?
And why is Stephen King recommending so thoroughly every other author’s books as being ‘Hard to forget’ or ‘Hard to put down’, before it’s on general sale?
This book explains it all so very well. The book is a best seller because the editors decide it will be. It’s that simple. They’ll get every member of staff to Tweet great reviews, the magazines get free copies and the big book stores get a personal visit from the author who does readings and signing sessions. It’s all done at that point.
The next stage is down to us, or so we believe. Social media now takes over, and the reviews and gossip machine takes us like sheep to Amazon and we click the button to Buy Now. The celebrities post their ‘Top 20 Unputdownable Summer Reads’ and we’re dragged in by our greedy reading eyes to believe that if Dua Lipa likes it, we will. The cynical side of me wonders how the celebrities get time to read as prolifically as we are led to believe, as they must read ten times the amount to be able to rave about each of the new best sellers on their published book lists. Even nice people like Judy can’t love every book she reads? Each book we purchase digitally triggers the algorithm to fire upon us a media blizzard of similar and not-so-similar book recommendations. Who amongst us have never received a “Recommended for you because you read [Insert book title here]” message in our inbox or through our Amazon, Facebook or Audible front page?
Anyway, after the credulous reading crowd snap up the books and read them over our cuppa at lunchtime, we tell our buddies who will then take that recommendation to their book club. All good – honest word of mouth recommendations. But we may also get asked to leave feedback with our online vendor. Every time we complete a book by E-Reader or media player, the very next screen you see is requesting our five star rating.
It's this rating, along with informed, misinformed, AI or real person review that the book Yellowface is based on. There are a couple of themes in the book: the devious mind-altering machinations of the book publishing industry; racism in all its forms; and how toxic social media is in our lives.
If we are being told the truth, authors scour the reviews, tweets and comments across all platforms to see what we all think of their latest oeuvre. In the book, the harsh world of publishing and personal judgement by strangers is what leads the protagonist to do some fairly drastic things, excusing and explaining her behaviour to herself as justifiable and correct. Events roll out from this point and it’s social media that spreads the scandals, truths, lies and unfairness out to the thousands of followers and that drives the sales figures up and down and the fictitious author into a near breakdown state.
The racism in the book cut both ways: a white person was criticised for writing a book about another culture and ethnicity, and the white person criticised the Asian for being taken on as an author because the publishers were looking to fulfil their inclusion quota.
Quite thought-provoking really, but this isn’t the right forum for my political view on that.
The twist in the tale was really surprising, at least, to me, and the whole book was incredibly cleverly constructed if you’ve got the tenacity to see beyond the obvious. It is a book that is layered with political, cultural and historical references and has a strong social commentary, which finds us, the general public, lacking imagination, intelligence and enough emotional intelligence to see beyond bigotry, the marketing hype and media lies.
All that said, I didn’t really enjoy the book. It wasn’t a fun read, and I don’t enjoy being shown how we, I, have become a marketers’ dream, blindly consuming the books, television and films that we’re manipulated into purchasing.
I hated the protagonist: she was a misguided, uncharitable narcissist, that glowed in the adulaton despite having stolen the glory. She was clearly driven to the edge of ill health by people’s reactions to her own behaviour, but chose to blame everyone else for her own misfortune. Far from being a happy ending at least, the book ends with us knowing more, and possibly worse was in store.
It was written really well, was easy to follow and it was a really clever plotline. I really hope it was pure fiction, not drawn from the author’s own experience.
I’d give this book a high star rating, because it was good value for an Audible credit, well laid out, giving us an insight into Chinese and Korean culture, history, the publishing world, psychology and a kicking twist at the end. I just didn’t like the book. I could see the darkness of the plot and the overwhelming irony of the ending, but not the hilarity that some reviews promised. Perhaps it’s only funny to those living the publishing life – perhaps they’ll be the only ones to get the joke?
I’d hoped that my Between the Covers book club buddies enjoyed the nuances as much as I did.
We met last night to discuss the book (Thank you to our wonderful hostess, Derry), and all that read it hated the main character. I think we all struggled to some degree to engage with the book because we couldn’t empathise or engage with June. One reader doesn’t like books read in the first person. One reader was kept awake at night with the decisions June had made and skipped the middle section entirely.
Based entirely upon the idea that all authors are trawling the online world hunting for articles about them, I have not given this book an actual ‘out of 10’ rating. I wouldn’t want our lovely book group to become the final straw that pushes anyone over the edge 😊
Our next book is Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French. This has 4.4 stars on Amazon. It’s a good 12.5 hours long and that’s value for anyone’s Audible credit!
Read along, if you’d fancy it?
By the way, one of the WI members is keen to join an afternoon reading group: anyone wishing to make up a group? Join Carol on the 1st Wednesday afternoon of the month – next one 2nd October - 2-4 pm
Sx
“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.”
― Anne Herbert
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