Supermarket cashier vs influencer

Julie Chan Is Dead
by Liann Zhang

Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2025
$24.99 / 9781668079867

Reviewed by Jessica Poon

*

The title of Liann Zhang’s debut novel, Julie Chan Is Dead, is both a red herring and metaphor. Really, Julie Chan is alive, but she’s not thriving. Meanwhile, her twin sister, Chloe van Huusen, a skin care influencer, revels in Internet dotage and enviably extravagant wealth. 

Julie is prone to shoplifting in her job as a cashier and snapping at customers who mistake her for Chloe inexplicably cosplaying as a blue collar shift worker. When Julie and Chloe became orphans after their parents died in a car accident, Julie was adopted by “a penny-pinching, foul-mouthed Cantonese woman who uses old Cheeto bags as folders for her tax returns,” an unflattering description that brings to mind Matilda’s Miss Trunchbull. In contrast, Chloe had the luck to be adopted by a rich white family exuding major Mayflower vibes. Julie is palpably embittered.

When Julie and Chloe do briefly reunite, Julie is given a house—the reunion is filmed and goes viral. But Chloe’s sentimental, sisterly longing disappears when the cameras stop filming. Unsurprisingly, Julie’s sour toward her twin sister, Chloe, and quick to think the worst of her. While it’s true that Chloe may appear to care more about being perceived well than anything else—par for the course for a skin care influencer with a cult-ish following—it’s also true that Chloe buys Julie a house! That’s life-changing capital. Granted, being evocatively sentimental only while being filmed is highly suspect. 

Julie does her best not to obsessively fixate on her twin’s social media, but that’s easier said than done. A dearth of social media updates elicits her suspicions, which prompts Julie to impulsively travel to New York, only to discover that Chloe is dead in her apartment. When a paramedic mistakes Julie for Chloe, at first Julie is taken aback. Then she decides to go along with the mistake—to claim the life she’s always felt she deserved, the one her sister got to have. 

It’s a juicy, escapist premise where Instagram is a veritable character. Julie quickly realizes that being an influencer, however ostensibly vapid, is actually a lot of work. Constantly performing authenticity for consumption is not for the weak. Ditto for extreme dieting to fit into an exclusive dress. As the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino might say, “always be optimizing.”

Chloe’s influencer friends sometimes seem interchangeable—predictably gorgeous, prone to laughably privileged complaints, and, somehow, don’t seem to realize that Julie is not actually Chloe. But even these supposed friends, who don’t seem to know Chloe well enough to realize Julie isn’t Chloe, are still more friends than Julie’s ever had. 

Then, on a notoriously secret group vacation to a private island with influencers, Julie realizes there’s more to these influencer friends than she’s given them credit for—and not necessarily in a good way. 

Curiously absent in Julie impersonating Chloe, however, is a therapist, the hallmark of every rich person. I wouldn’t have minded bearing witness to Julie bearing her heart out to a therapist—but doing so from the imagined perspective of her sister. It would also have been interesting for Julie to reflect more on how Chloe’s detractors criticized Chloe for only dating white men and only befriending white people, which is rich material, but never elaborated on. 

At times, the zippy brevity of chapters, pop culture references, and many text messages, feel more glib than strictly necessary. One of the influencers, Iz, who appears to be in rare possession of a soul, becomes mildly—though, perhaps necessarily—didactic when she correctly calls out her peers for being racist. Though sometimes too critical of others to have much self-awareness, there are inklings that Julie is a progressive feminist. For instance, when she thinks: “I didn’t know a dress could be this serious. What the hell is wrong with these people? Men accused of sexual assault don’t receive half this scrutiny.” 

There are some Sapphic vibes that could have been explored further, e.g. “I want to devour her whole from inside out, leaving only her skin so I can wear it and become her, that’s how much I love her.” That sentence reminded me of a twentysomething dog sitter I knew who said, of her own dog, “I love him so much I just want to fit him inside my mouth. Do you get that feeling?” (I could not honestly say I did, but I did understand the ardor being like a physical compulsion).

Overall, though, some of the dialogue shines, e.g. “I don’t see race, only foundation shades.” Julie’s cutting remarks can be amusing: “Ever since capitalizing on mental health struggles became a profitable thing to do, grief manifestos are a dime a dozen” and “It takes keen talent to write something less profound than the back of a shampoo bottle.” At one point, there are things that enter mouths, which I would not have guessed would enter mouths (get your mind out of the gutter).

An immersive escape rife with disturbing subject matter and juxtaposed with ample comedy and pop culture references, Vancouver- and Toronto-based Liann Zhang’s book, Julie Chan Is Dead, is a party animal of a book that resoundingly delivers, managing to make death absurd, tragic, sometimes karmic, and often funny.

Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and pianist of dubious merit who recently returned to BC after completing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica interviewed Sheung-King, and recently reviewed books by Sarah Leavitt, Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella, Angela Douglas, Zazie Todd, Holly Brickley, Alastair McAlpine, and Jack Wang for BCR.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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