"With a poetic voice of crackling electricity, K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the subversive storytelling of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family’s history from Taiwan to America, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and girlhood."
Have heard such excellent things about this book - looking forward to reading.

What a book by K-Ming Chang! My recommendation is to go in with no expectations, the prose is poetic and disturbing, weird and unexpected. Chang tells the story of Daughter, and the stories Daughter receives from her mother, and her grandmother. Daughter awakes with a tail one day like Hu Go Po, the tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. Daughter falls in love with Ben, a neighborhood girl who understands and matches Daughter’s supernatural animality. It’s a beautiful story of growing up, of how our lineage shapes us, of young queer love, told through a plot structure that’s anything but traditional.

Magical, lyrical, surprising and full of very embodied body horror. This is fresh, new, and an exciting addition to the lit landscape.

DNF at 5%. The story sounded interesting but the writing style was not for me. I know many people will enjoy it though and the story had potential.

A magical and imaginative story, however it was hard to keep track of what was real and what was story. Thank you to the publishers for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Between NetGalley and Edelweiss I have read and reviewed well over 600 ARCs and this is only the second time I have DNF a review book. This story was disgusting, obscene, and vulgar just for the sake of being disgusting, obscene, and vulgar. Some people have been led to believe by social media that obscene on its own is "edgy". Edgy used to mean cutting edge creativity, now it just means slapping together any manner of shocking for shock value's sake, baseless trash deemed trendy, so anyone with no effort can get published without any talent, skill, real creativity.

K-Ming Chang is one of the most unique talents that comes along in a generation, and this first novel is all of her incredibleness on display. Her magical thinking, her lyrical prose, her depth of characters. Bestiary is the first but I will read everything this wonder of an author writes.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got me to read on even though it was among 296 other books I’m charged to read.

When I shoved the scab aside with my fingernails, there was a hole beneath, deep as my finger and bloodless as a glove socket. I slid my forefinger in, trying to diagnose what kind of hole it was. I named every hole-species I knew: wells; wombs; wounds; spots in the wall where my brother stuck his pencil through, thinking the walls would scab on their own, and when they didn’t, he sealed them with his boogers and let them petrify into stone; lakes; seas, which meant most of the world was a hole, which meant I was native to holes, animal burrows, anuses, atlases. Twirling my finger inside the hole above my ass, I decided that it must be the beginning of a fault-line, a seismic shift of my spine.

I read this a while ago, and recently re-read it since I couldn't stop thinking about it. I loved this book. I loved the concept of taking folktales and reworking them into more modern stories. The story is about a Taiwanese-American family - specifically, three generations of women - and navigating their history, migration, and trauma via the lense of folktales. It is a fantastic exploration of queerness, belonging, beauty, and family.

Chang's writing is lyrical, almost poetic, and immerses you in the story easily, even if parts of it delve into the supernatural. The story took its twists and turns that were unexpected (partly because I am unfamiliar with the folktales), but that I enjoyed nonetheless. This story is part mythology, part family saga, part queer coming-of-age. Chang seamlessly melds all three into a beautiful, visceral story.

This one is not for me, which is unfortunate because I love a book with magical realism. DNF @ around 30% due to the gore.

I found this to be a really tough read - just not what I expected and not a style of writing I enjoy at all.

This book is full of beautiful language. But I have to admit that it made me feel pretty dumb and I'm still not sure if I understood half of the story that was told. I think it's a beautiful exploration of fantastical queer identity, and I really appreciated the gruesome portrayal of Taiwanese American women. I think this is one where I need to return to it to learn more. In the meantime, I'll be reading all about it and hoping to clear up my confused brain.

I almost put this one down 1/4 of the way through, but I'm glad I stuck with it. Chang's a very inventive writer, her magical realism is effective, and the merging of each narrator's story (if you consider them to be separate) is formally pleasing. The story is compelling and, eventually, engaging.

On the downside, the book can be unpleasant. As it progresses, it makes sense -- Chang thinks about earthiness, about what it means to be embodied, and particularly how that plays out for women. There are big ideas here, and she smartly grounds both her ideas about embodiment and the experiences of her characters in physical, fleshy ways. The problem is that it can be too much, particularly in her obsession with urine. While it forces us to confront our bodied realities, it's both a little gross and sort of tedious to have to deal with yet more pants-peeing or other bodily function.

The story and the ideas ultimately push beyond that issue, and Chang's language is frequently wonderful. The second half and particularly maybe the last third is sort of marvelous, and when the earthy nature of her writing takes on meaning, it gives it a sharpness that works.

I feel split about the book in the end. I was impressed by it more than I enjoyed it, but I do think Chang's an interesting writer worth watching.

A strong immigrant story with a bit of a magical realism element - a good pair for Nightbitch! The prose is beautiful but may be too baroque for some readers.

My biggest problem with this novel was the writing style; it just wasn't to my taste at all, and it really prevented me from enjoying the rest of this novel. I found the story's focus to be disjointed, and though I thought there were some really beautiful sentences here and there, overall I didn't particularly enjoy reading this novel.

this story was beautiful, im still processing it. the most I can express right now is that as a POC, this book really hit home when it reveled in hard to discuss topics, and the magical realism gave this story so much more.

This novel is perfect for those who love experimental works.

There is a pinch of literary fiction, folktale, mythology, historical background, fantasy, intergenerational aspects, oral storytelling, queer allegories, and so much more.

Bestiary is a nonlinear, multi-generational experiment exploring how stories are passed down from generation to generation. K-Ming Chang plays with narrative structure by blending the epistolary form, fables, oral storytelling, and close third-person narration. In the narrative, the character Mother tells Daughter a story about a hungry tiger who eats toes to explain why she cut hers off and keeps them in a tin. Then, one day Daughter wakes up with a tiger tail. This novel turns impossible tales of rivers impregnating women, flying crabs, and holes carrying letters across the country into a plausible reality. There is no line between fantasy and reality as the two are brilliantly woven together.

I requested to read this novel because I was lucky enough to be in a workshop taught by K-Ming last summer. It was a dream come true learning from someone whose thematic elements are similar to my own.

This was an excellent book - it is a haunting and intriguing tale, with fascinating characters and lore. You won't want to look away while immersed in Chang's world.

That was entertaining but I'm still reeling! I know making readers uncomfortable with shocking descriptions is a thing, I've just never grasped the reason even if I get what they're going for. That said, I love coming of age stories, multigenerational stories, and magical realism--This was all of that and I couldn't stop reading.

DNF @ 10%. I don't want to discourage anyone from reading this book, because I think it's beautiful and great for someone who likes their stories full of symbolism and magical realism -- and doesn't mind some bizarre descriptions and at time disjointed and violent details. I would like to come back and give this book another try at some point, because I do think the language is gorgeous, and that any book that pushes your boundaries is worth a read. As many folks have pointed out, it deals specifically with generational trauma, thru the eyes of three women in a Taiwanese American family. If you like your literature dark and ethereal, pick this one up!