It's a hell of an opening line: “The night I watch Athena Liu die, we're celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.”
The narrator is June Hayward, a struggling white writer who lives in the shadow of her classmate and frenemy, Athena Liu – the literary world's brightest star. Moments before the freak accident that claims her life, Athena is telling June about her work in progress: a novel about Chinese workers in World War I.
So what does June do? After a moment of shock
