A review by foggy_rosamund
But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu

4.0

A sophisticated exploration of racism and classism in an academic setting. Girl, the narrator of this novel, is a second-generation Malaysian immigrant to Australia. She was born when her parent's plane arrived in Australia, and feels like an outsider around her Australian classmates, but also struggles to as an only child within a tightly-knit family. The novel describes six weeks that Girl spends in the UK on an academic residency: she is supposed to be working on her thesis about Sylvia Plath, and on her "post-colonial novel". This is a playful novel that questions why we make art, and what it means to study someone's work, while also examining the everyday racism of academia, and the ways that Girl is always forced to be on the outside. I found this book engaging, but I wasn't always convinced by the author's prose style, particularly in dialogue, which often felt forced or unnatural. Nevertheless, it's an engaging book.