"But the Girl is a vivid novel of consciousness with a delightful sense of play. Jessica Zhan Mei Yu writes with striking originality that combines the irreverent and the philosophical about the ambiguities and ambivalences of contemporary life. A wonderful new novel for a metamodern world." --Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans
"Impressive... Yu remakes the art of writing itself." --Guardian
"Yu's masterly debut... brims with striking insights and fully realized characters, exploring with nuance and self-deprecating humor the fraught reality of navigating academic and artistic spaces as a woman of color. This signals the arrival of a bold new voice." --STARRED Publishers Weekly Review
"A unique and meaningful novel: refreshingly unsentimental, written with a directness that is both self-effacing and wry. The voice sometimes recalls Lucia Berlin, J. D. Salinger or Lorrie Moore but it's entirely her own." --Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
"A fiercely intelligent re-examination of literature through the lens of colonization, full of fire." --Alice Pung, author of One Hundred Days
"With But the Girl, Yu offers a challenging and invigorating work of many faces." --Australian Book Review
"Yu's narrator instinctively plays anthropologist, skewering not just social minutiae but language itself." --The Age
"Jessica Zhan Mei Yu has crafted a finely layered novel, with a vivid interior world and a playful, vivacious prose style. Here is a writer whose sharp observations, embrace of self-critique and crisp voice keep the reader engaged in the imagined world of the novel -- and help us see the world anew." --The Conversation
"Yu has created a love and hate letter to academia, to the labour of being a woman of colour in creative industries, and to the intricate webs of sorrows and joys spun by families. But the Girl is a contemporary novel at its finest: witty and seemingly meandering, but deeply poignant and skilful in its dissection." --Readings
"Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's debut novel is a delicate investigation into intergenerational immigrant subjectivities." --The Skinny, (5-star review)
"A narrator like Girl feels precious and singular: in the mirror of her thoughts, I saw myself often, a feeling that was both embarrassing and deeply affirming, which was much like growing up." --Meanjin
"Yu writes about the legacy of being a second-generation immigrant, racism, intergenerational trauma, the reclamation of English as a subject of colonization, and the pitfalls of academia with a biting incisiveness and gallows humour." --Books + Publishing
"But the Girl is a debut that heralds a skilled and singular new talent." --The List
"But the Girl is enjoyable, varied and strange. It is a remarkable first novel..." --Midwest Book Review
"In this semi-autobiographical telling of art, friendship, the musings of Girl will be relatable to anyone subjected to the absurdity of the world." --Our Culture Magazine