I just finished this book, and I found it very entertaining! I've seen a lot of discourse on this book already, so I wanted to get my more random thoughts out there:
-Was it just me, or did anyone else think the story was going to involve COVID? I think the only date mentioned throughout the entire story is March 2020, when Adele publishes her takedown of June's Mother Witch with evidence. I thought this was foreshadowing that news of the pandemic was going to take over the media, and June's scandal would be quickly forgotten because of it, ironically being saved by this disease that originated in China and that resulted in a spike in Asian hate crimes. I really don't understand why the author included the date March 2020 otherwise….
-I guess I have to chalk this up to June's unreliable narration, but I got confused about how Athena said her WWI project was "finally finished," and it's emphasized how she doesn't let anyone see her work until she's completely done with it (she asks June to read it, meaning she's done with it for sure), but then June goes on to say it was not done at all and had a bunch of empty spots that Athena was gonna fill in later etc, etc.
-June also starts by saying how amazing the manuscript is and better than she could ever write in her lifetime, but this then becomes "it needed a ton of work" to "it was utterly unpublishable" lmao
-As insufferable and terrible as June is, I found myself rooting for her to get away with it… that is, until Mother Witch. At first, I thought it was completely fine that she was taking inspiration from that one paragraph Athena wrote. I didn't even think that paragraph was good (maybe I'm just not a literary scholar but it felt too vague and random to be interesting to me). But then it turns out June put that paragraph word for word into her opening????? JUNE WHY
-I'm not sure if this was intentional (to maybe show that June's not actually that good of a writer) or publisher error or stylistic choice by the author, but were there like… a ton of grammatical errors with the semicolons? Or do I just not know my punctuations lol?
Examples:
Geoff seems inordinately angry; far angrier than this response justifies.
^ should be a comma?
Sometimes her face is contorted in grotesque expressions; eyes wide, tongue wagging.
^ shouldn't this be a colon instead of semicolon?
-All of June's publishing team and friends advise her to keep her head down and not respond to any of the allegations, and I know this is good advice for the most part, but I think not addressing allegations AT ALL makes you look suuuuuper guilty. I think June's best bet would've been to issue one professionally written statement denying any of the allegations and then not speaking on it again, which is exactly what she ends up doing (later on) that initially turns the public back in her favor! (before the new Mother Witch scandal) Yes I know June had to make sure her "detractors" had no solid proof against her before putting out any statements, but her team who thought she was fully innocent didn't know that and still was advising her to say absolutely nothing. Idk, in my eyes, people who get accused of something terrible and don't address it at all are basically admitting their guilt with their silence.
-Speaking of, why do the characters keep insisting that June shouldn't be bothered by all these accusations as long as she's innocent? IF June were innocent, then she should be REALLY bothered that her name and career are getting dragged through the mud over something she didn't do. Who would possibly not be bothered by that?? She was literally losing connections and deals over it and people were treating her meanly.
-June literally says she wouldn't know how to explain to Eden why Athena's new Instagram post bothers her without having to admit that she's struggling with guilt from stealing. GIRL WHAT DO YOU MEAN. Someone hacked your dead friend's account, posted creepy photos of her being alive, targeted you directly–THAT'S NOT ENOUGH REASON TO BE BOTHERED?? GUILTY OR NOT?
-I'm confused about the timeline after Mother Witch's release. It says Adele's blog was posted 2 weeks after its release, and by the end of the month, Brett's saying it's "been awhile" since June worked on a new book. It's been…. a month….? That feels really short idk
-Was Patricia Liu's comment about "Athena would never write something like that" supposed to lead to something? I felt like that hinted heavily at an upcoming reveal into Athena's family dynamics but just got dropped
-Look, I get why Candice wanted revenge for getting fired, but seriously? She really thought leaving a one star review under her own full name and profile, for an author whose project she directly worked on, wouldn't hurt her professionally? Come on.
-How the hell did Candice convincingly photoshop multiple pictures of Athena where she was literally choking herself and lunging at the camera lmao?? And I'm assuming she got some recordings of Athena's voice to play at the Exorcist steps and spoke herself whenever her recordings didn't fit.
-June isn't driven by her passion for writing. She's driven by the idea of being famous and successful. She says herself that writing was only fun before she got to know how the publishing industry eats you alive, so if that's how she feels, she SHOULD be happy to pursue a regular stable income job and write in her free time instead, away from the publishing industry. But of course, that wouldn't yield her fame and fortune and envious glares from her colleagues, so she'd rather continue to dig her grave even deeper with the Athena scandal.
-I saw a lot of people were disappointed by the ending because we don't get to see June get punished but idk, I think we did? We spend the entirety of the novel in June's head so we know firsthand that she's… a mess. She is so deeply insecure and perpetually miserable, and she doesn't have enough self awareness to ever change that (though I do find it interesting how she will call out her own insecurities and projections and how things are her fault… But then always jump back into victimhood). On top of that, she DOES get dragged online and takes hits to her career like crazy for half the book, and she's gonna continue to get dragged once Candice releases her book. She's definitely faced her punishment; she just has the audacity to keep going lmao.
by incrediblydeadinside
6 Comments
OK, I’m not answering all of those, but I’ll answer a couple.
June is of course the ultimate unreliable narrator, and she’s also racist AF. I’m certain that we are supposed to think that she doesn’t understand Athena’s World War I novel. The comments about June trying to understand the parts of the book that are about the Chinese— when she thinks the book has incest because so many characters have the same name! – this is all ‘white people being racist about a culture they aren’t bothering to understand’ humor.
So yes, the book is finished, but we are supposed to think that Athena gave it a perfect, probably ambiguous ending that June just doesn’t understand. We also get the distinct impression that she’s dumbing down quite a bit of the language and narration. We do know that her rewriting includes plumping out white characters/creating a whole-ass white savior within the book, so her comments on the manuscript’s need for editing should be taken with a giant shaker of salt.
The book is very very meta at the end. Remember that June has been backed into a corner and has decided to write a novel about what happened, starting with saying that she stole the novel after Athena choked just like people online suspect, and that it’s going great guns until this hungry ghost shows up and the book seems to be veering into supernatural territory. In other words, June is writing Yellowface. We are reading that book, and here’s a hungry ghost that hijacks that narrative.
— of course she shouldn’t take a Twitter thread or Goodreads overly seriously. Do you ever watch the daily show? Jon Stewart just talked about the Harrison Butler furor online and said, “have you not been on the Internet? That’s all it is, people talking trash about other people.” June is driving herself completely nuts looking at the critics online, and while I agree that she should put out a single statement and drop it, her publisher also doesn’t want to deal with June melting down, understandably. The book is a huge hit, your publisher will tell you that worrying about every little thing online is pointless.
I just finished this book and I absolutely love it! So I want to share some of my opinion.
Everyone says June is unlikeable but I like her a lot. She’s so freakish unhinged, spent 90% of the book hating on people, and became a fully-fledged cartoon villain at the end. It’s both hearbreaking and hilarious to watch her development.
I also root for her to get some sort of redemption arc after The Last Front but sadly, that didn’t happen.
About Athena letting June read her draft, I think it’s because Athena really liked June and wanted her opinion. Also because she was drunk at the time.
About not responding to the allegations, I think it’s because the majority of readers don’t go to Twitter and follow news about their books. So it’s pointless to respond, especially when those negative comments only came from trolls and really vocal people. Also, June seems very distraught by the allegations at the time, so her colleagues probably thought that if she responded, she would try to comment further to the comments of her response and could not get away from Twitter.
About people telling her not to get bothered, I think it’s because they’re supportive but not close enough to June to offer some sort of emotional support. So their best possible advice would be the most rational one (which obviously doesn’t work because June was emotionally distraught).
Yeah I totally agree with you about the Candice’s leaving the review part. The funny thing is she didn’t even use an anonymous account.
About Mrs Liu’s comment on June’s novella, I was really hoping that we could learn more about Athena’s family history but I was so disappointing that we only got like 2 sentences about this topic.
For me, the ending was disappointing not because of June but because of Candice being unethical, yet making profit from someone else’s suffering.
One final thing, I read a lot of posts saying that June is racist. I still can’t figure out which part tells this. I mean, she’s a thief, unstable, petty, but I can’t find a part saying that she’s racist.
Sorry for the long comment but I love this book so much! 😂
I googled the book after finishing it and this is the first thread that came up. Regarding the audio at the steps and the convincing instagram photos, I kind of just assumed that AI was used and maybe June didn’t know enough about it to question it? Kind of a stretch I guess.
I was SO BOTHERED by the March 2020 reference, I’m glad you mentioned it. There were a couple of threads in this text that I felt were dropped so maybe it’s just by mistake. I was wondering we never heard about the film after the book was optioned (although that might have been deliberately and just how things go with novels, the rights bought but never developed into a film etc.)
I would say on the Twitter thing – I work in comms (though not in publishing) and would probably think “ignore and let it blow over” would be standard advice for Twitter. Usually very online and specific community not representative of wider audience – the book makes a reference that The Last Front isn’t suffering ‘in the real world’ (until after Motherwitch) and no one really knows of the original allegations.
With Athena’s mum – I think Patricia makes that comment because Motherwitch is about June’s poor relationship with her own mother and Patricia doesn’t recognise that relationship with Athena (or is in denial, as its heavily implied that their relationship is strained).
Incidentally, I thought it was odd to never hear from Patricia again after it “all came out”
It’s odd reading about “photoshop” when I think if Yellowface had been published a year or two after it had been, the ending would have been about AI. Wish they’d explained how Candice did the audio a bit more explicitly but I read it as engineering Athenas voice from interviews (the words she was saying seemed a bit odd and generic).
I took Patricia Liu’s comment more as throwing shade at June. Saying I know Athena had little involvement in the Novella because it’s so poorly written when compared to her daughter’s work (presuming she had read The Last Front and Mother Witch). Hence why she was asking June in that same scene if she needs to read Athena’s notebooks – knowing that The Last Front is her daughter’s work.
thank you for mentioning the march 2020 thing!!! i’m currently working on a timeline for the book bc it’s ALLLLL over the place (which i kind of assumed is bc june is an unreliable narrator ofc and this is the Yellowface she’s writing after all the events of the book), and it’s so obvious that things just don’t line up that it’s actually frustrating sometimes. a couple of examples:
* june and athena meet at yale in first year and bond over the idiot by elif batuman (pub. 2017)
* athena’s debut came out the year they graduated (presumably 4 years later so 2021)
* athena meets the producer of tiger king 2 years after her debut launched (tiger king came out in 2020)
* athena and june have known each other for over 9 years when athena dies
* the adele “hit piece” comes out march 2020, around 2 years after the last front is published
none of this makes sense, the timeline just doesn’t add up!!!!!