Arts Alive San Antonio

“Julie Chan is Dead” by Liann Zhang
Reviewed by Steven G. Kellman

Driving under the influence is a crime, but shopping under the influence is a popular pastime. Handsomely paid pawns called “influencers” attract millions of followers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to videos modeling trendy clothing, cosmetics, and comestibles, to the delight of and remuneration by eager sponsors. Influencers are the apotheosis of internet consumption.

            Julie Chan Is Dead, Liann Zhang’s debut novel, brings a dual perspective to the peculiar – largely female and young – world of influencers, through identical twins Julie Chan and Chloe Van Huusen. After their parents die in a traffic accident, the four-year-old girls are separated. Chloe is adopted by a wealthy white family on New York’s Upper West Side, while Julie is raised by a surly working-class Cantonese aunt. The two inhabit distinct universes and have almost no contact, until Julie receives an enigmatic message. Abandoning her dead-end job as a grocery cashier, she makes her way to Chloe’s luxurious apartment, whose door is conveniently ajar. Inside, Julie finds Chloe lifeless, victim of a drug overdose.

            Julie is of course a dead ringer for her dead sister. Her instinctive decision to pass for Chloe provides entry into what for her was but a fantasy of wealth and glamor. She is able to clothe herself in designer dresses that cost as much as a car and dine on caviar specked with gold flakes. Like The Prince and the Pauper, this is a story of swapping social positions, except that only one of the parties is alive to make the switch.

Julie, who narrates the novel, is, like the reader, an outsider to the influencer trade, and her attempts to adapt to it expose its absurdities. A privileged, harried influencer explains: “Work, work, work. All the time, every second. People don’t know how hard it is to be us.” Julie does not find it easy to pretend to be Chloe, a perfect exemplar of her generation’s tony taste. Susceptible to imposter syndrome, she also has critical thoughts about what she is trying to counterfeit. She notes a stranger’s comment on Reddit: “You’re an idiot if you trust a single thing these influencers sell. There [sic] nothing more than society’s parasites. Real-life snake oil salesmen.”

            At the same time, a real-life snake slithers into Julie’s newfound paradise. Her avaricious aunt gets wind of Julie’s imposture and, realizing what a bonanza is now easily available, begins to extort millions of dollars from Julie in exchange for not unmasking her as a fraud. If influencers are parasites, she becomes a parasite of a parasite. And Julie is forced to work, work, work even harder to pay off the shakedown from her aunt.  

            The novel becomes more than a glimpse at the ludicrous lives of influencers when Bella Marie, the doyenne of the profession, invites nine younger stars, called Belladonnas, to her private island for a week-long retreat that devolves into a kind of cult communion filtered through Lord of the Flies. Zhang, who is identified as a second-generation Chinese Canadian, is writing burlesque, even – and especially – when her characters are humorless. When Julie/Chloe bursts out laughing at Bella Marie’s description of a ridiculous ritual she demands the Belladonnas perform, the veteran influencer responds: “Darling, I’ve been serious this whole time. I’m unveiling the truth of the world to you. It’s not a laughing matter.” But for Zhang, who sees comedy in commercial excess, it is.

            The truth is closer to Julie’s cynical view of social media influencers as “a toxic cesspool of self-aggrandizing narcissists who feed us images of their deceptively attainable wealth through LED screens connected to our palms.” That does not leave Zhang much material to work with, other than cartoon characters engaged in silly tasks. Because it is Chloe, not Julie, whose corpse is discovered in the opening pages, the title Julie Chan Is Dead is a lie, but so is the world of false appearances she blunders into.

            Ultimately, this is a novel for digital denizens both fascinated by and critical of social media influencers. It’s ideal reader is probably under thirty. For others, Zhang is swinging a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Who will recommend a premium mallet?
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Chan Is Dead; by Liann Zhang; Atria Books; 2025; $28.99.