This book was a little tough for me to get through - it's probably not for me, but I think some others would really love this. You can tell that the author is a poet right off the bat. Part of the reason this was difficult for me is that I'm not a seasoned poetry reader, I much prefer conversational prose, or maybe it's that I'm more comfortable reading traditional narratives. This definitely weaves storytelling with poetry with prose, but the way it's pieced together was hard to follow for me.

The writing is very raw and filled with bodily functions - some of the descriptions even made me a little queasy, but it's probably a reflection of how we rarely see these natural parts of the body described in such graphic terms. From piss to nipples to shit to semen, it's all there. The writing is also beautiful and poetic - plenty of quotable quotes and deep thoughts - but again, just not my cup of tea. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC!

It explores the multiple layers of generational trauma embedded with mythical aspects in such a lyrical way. It’s as if you found yourself imagining the stories you might have overheard of past family members you never got to meet. I really enjoyed this book! great character development!

Visceral, lyrical, and utterly engrossing. I can see Chang's command of poetry in this debut. The way that the magical realism was blended with the family saga was superb. I utterly enjoyed this book and I'm eager for more from the author in the future.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang follows three generations of women in the same family, while also exploring myths and folktales as the family tells them. The poetic language used throughout was interesting and kept the tone pretty consistent between the reality and the folktales.

What I found most interesting in this book was how the myths and folktales blend into the story and interpreted by characters in the book. I thought it was interesting that when the grandmother's letters are appearing in the yard, there are footnotes in the version Daughter translates where Ben is reacting to the story as it unfolds.

I will say that I did notice the amount of references to bodily functions in this, which I see a lot of reviewers mentioning, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the book.

I'm not an own-voices reviewer, and I'm looking forward to reading those to see how other readers have interpreted this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and One World/PRH for the e-ARC. This does not influence my thoughts or feelings about this book.

DNF @ 36%. Bestiary is an ambitious book, intertwining Taiwanese cosmology and mythology with a story about immigration and family that feels simultaneously historical and futuristic. The book employs strong imagery around bodily fluids to underscore humanity and to shock the reader into realist disgust.

I do think this book requires an Own Voices perspective so I'd suggest checking out @elena.luo and @lifebyesther's thoughts on Instagram. The actual writing and overwrought descriptions left me feeling unenthused and I decided to move on.

Representation: lesbian main character, lesbian love interest, several queer ancestors, Taiwanese and Chinese immigrant family

Bestiary follows a family of Taiwanese-Americans, focusing on the women: Mother, Daughter, and Grandmother. Daughter is telling us the history of her family to the best of her ability, translating from letters written by her grandmother, relaying stories that her mother told her. Shortly after being told a story about Hu Gu Po, a tiger spirit living in a woman, she wakes up with a tail. That's not even the strangest thing that happens throughout this book. There are backyard holes that breathe, fish-daughters, a golden cage with a shadow of a bird in it but no visible bird, and she's falling for a neighborhood girl that has her own strangeness.

Rating: 4/5 This was extremely interesting to read because of the writing style, which reminded me quite a bit of Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater and Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties. Chang's writing bends reality, uses words normally associated with the human body to describe nature and makes it possible for a human to get pregnant by a river or grow a tiger tail. It's very poetic at times, which the author has background in. The author said that she'd sometimes class this as "speculative history" and I can see that! I'd definitely put this into the fabulism category as well, plenty of the things that happen in this book fall into that. This is a generational story, exploring how different generations experience the world, pass on their stories and their trauma. There are many folktales in this, and they're all based on Taiwanese, Chinese, or Fujianese folktales. The author says that they can all be found in text form online, but because they're often from an oral tradition, there might be many different versions. There isn't exactly a plot to this, but that is not a bad thing at all! It feels like an epic being told to us, rather than something that's written down in a book to start with. It touches on domestic violence, poverty, racism. It also has bright moments of queer love between Daughter and the neighborhood girl, and this love is simply accepted by those around them. Queer love even stays in their family myths, with a man falling for a pirate, Grandmother experiencing some love for a woman. I really enjoyed reading Chang's writing and look forward to reading more of her work.

I got an ARC of this book.

DNF at 20%. I gave up when the narrator compared her new tail to her brother's erection. There was an obsession with bodily fluids (urine and spit) that just didn't make sense. It overwhelmed the rest of the story repeatedly. If you removed all references to urine and spit you would be left with maybe a paragraph or two.

I liked the idea of this book, but I couldn't get through the execution.

I don't know how to describe this very unusual novel about three generations of Taiwan-American women. It takes patience, for sure, but it's worth your time. The language is poetic (and sometimes over the top), the situations both violent and strange, and the secrets deep. None of these women like themselves - or each other. There' s a lot going on and I suspect this will have many fans as it hits issues involving acceptance, racism, queer love, and magical realism. Others might find it tiring. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

Poetic, corporeal, and mesmerizing. Bestiary gives another definition to the phrase "women are legendary,".

Chang uses intense metaphor and vivid folktale storytelling to convey a story that deals with intergenerational trauma, tough love, and the struggles of being first- and second-generation American if not simply being an immigrant and navigating the circumstances that predicate it. Not only is the love between women explored in a familial context (between grandmother, mother, and daughter), but too through a queer young wlw romance (!!). I couldn't put it down.

I felt completely lost in this book--like it was a dream and like I was mesmerized. How can this novel be categorized? The myths and stories told by the characters are hardly separated from their reality. It's an impressive debut and I can't wait for more from Chang.

Really? The author of this book is only 22? She takes the story of Chinese immigrants to Arkansas and combines reality with Chinese mythology. Its not going to be a book for everyone. In fact, I don’t know who I would recommend it too, other than readers who are looking for an original story. The language is brutal in telling the story of three generations of Taiwanese Americans living in Arkansas and once I got through the first 10% of the book, things fell into place, sort of in place when you’re reading a book told from three different perspectives, Grandma, mother and daughter. Am I glad I read it? Yes, I am. I admire writers who are willing to go beyond what is traditional writing and create an original tale. She’s one of five who have been recognized as a 5 under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation.

This one was a DNF for me. I was also able to get a physical copy for an ARC, but I only made it about 25% of the way through my ebook. I didn't like the way it was narrated, it just seemed clunky to me.

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang follows three generations of Taiwanese-American women. The author describes it as "part migration story, part mythological retelling, part queer love story." The third-gen daughter grows a tiger tail one day and she must uncover her family's history to understand the source of the tail, and along the way she falls in love. Among many strangenesses, there are holes in the back yard that spit out letters from her estranged grandmother.

If I can compare this book to anything, it felt similar in voice to The Discomfort of Evening (which just won the International Booker so that's no light praise) because of the world of the children but the story has more complexity due to the multiple generations and the Hu Gu Po (tiger spirit). You can tell the author is a poet in all the writing but especially in the letters from the grandmother.

If you are a person of colour, a person of diaspora—Bestiary will resonate in a profound way. It will be a familiar story of alienation, survival/beauty, resilience.

Yet it will be wholly unfamiliar, too: every word is saturated with a sense of magical realism. Throughout it all, the lyrical serenity of the prose feels at odds with the unflinching violence that it captures—it’s discomfiting. It will throw you off.

All the Western stereotypes you’ve heard about East Asian people (that we are desexualized, sanitized, emotionally conservative, deferent model minorities)? This book is none of those things. Bestiary is crass, corporeal, primal: the characters remain unnamed, yet you feel as intimate with them as you would with a lover. It is rife with filth and beauty, so much so that it’s startling at times. Events flicker in and out of reality. Time seems to flow in a circular fashion. And familial love interweaves with sexual desire—queer desire—and potent violence.

I haven’t touched upon the plot of this book, and this was a conscious decision. There is no plot in the traditional sense, because whatever storyline exists does not unravel linearly or logically (the most I will say about plot is this: in prose that reads like poetry, three speakers—Daughter, Mother, Grandmother—convey the myths and stories that make up their family history as a diaspora Taiwanese clan in America).

I’m struck by the strange and singular details, which range from the bizarre to the squicky. The moon is "brown as a nipple," while trees "grow moss like pubic hair." The sky is "bad-breathed, freckled with stars like white bacteria on a tongue," and when Mother tells of her first job working in a chicken barn, she recalls that "[h]er shits were sugared with sawdust and she bled to pass them."

All of it is so, so visceral. I’ve never read anything like it.

Ultimately, Bestiary imbues the mundane with a sense of both heartbreak and fantastical possibility, and it was a gutting combination to read.

Until I watched a video of young debut author K-Ming Chang explaining Bestiary, I didn't understand what it was. The author says it's a mixture of creation mythology, migration tale, and queer love story involving three generations of a Taiwanese-American family. The granddaughter grows a tiger tail over night and several holes (or mouths, as the character could also be interpreted, at least in Japanese) open up in her backyard that yield mysterious letters from her estranged grandmother.

Set in 1980s America. Rather than a story about what happens to this fractured cast of characters, Bestiary is more of a convoluted combination of perverted creation myths, and gruesome children's stories such as Hu Gu Po, all involving different animals. The main character grows a tail, the mom's dismembered toes keep growing toenails, an aunt has snakes and a goose in her belly and a bird in her brain, a man named Agong births a rabbit, and another baby is born with a snake rooted to its crotch. The constant theme throughout might be translation and language but it's overshadowed by the constant parade of taboo flaunting randomness:

we never know if it's raining or if we're wetting ourselves
the flies that feast on our boogers when we sleep
when my mother ran out of dish soap... she spat directly on the dishes
so many flies I always woke with my mouth full of their eggs
dipping both her hands into the toilet bowl and flinging fistfuls
we'd both poured the ground beef... down our pants, laughing as the minced meat sagged our underwear
my father bought me a popsicle... the shape and color of a frozen booger
he drank beer at his drafting table and then pissed into the same bottle
I sat cross-legged in the (Costco) cart and humped the bars
she cured colds by stirring dung into tea
I ground myself against (the ginger root) until my crotch burned
Ba's bowels are like a waterslide so we stop at a reservoir... his shit floats on the surface
she tore out the girl's ponytail, flapping open her scalp to the bone
he shrilled with pain when I sprinkled his bed sores (with salt)

Synopsis from the publisher: "Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this blazing debut about one family's queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets."

I usually give high marks to books of magical realism that I find wildly inventive but I have to admit I grew tired of this one towards the end. Perhaps a bit too foul for my tastes.

I received an arc of this debut novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

K-Ming Chang's debut novel, Bestiary is a tale of culture, exploration, family legends, and so much more.

In many ways, Bestiary is a novel that defies description. Any description not written by K-Ming Chang won't truly do justice to the novel, as it will be incapable of capturing her unique and captivating writing style.

Three generations of Taiwanese-Americans have their stories unfold over the course of this novel. Their triumphs, their losses, and all of the oddities in between. This is a richly detailed book, full of their dreams, fantasies, and all of the moments that make them the unique beings they are.

“My mother always says that the story you believe depends on the body you're in. What you believe will depend on the color of your hair, your word for god, how many times you've been born, your zip code, whether you have health insurance, what your first language is, and how many snakes you have known personally.”

Bestiary is such a unique and beautiful novel, I'm honestly struggling to find the words to describe it myself. Certainly, anything I come up with will pale in comparison to K-Ming Chang's writing.
You can tell right away that her origin is in poetry, as it shows in every line and every piece of dialogue. Much of the story feels like a stream of consciousness, yet there's also something so very elegant about the way it forms. It's an intriguing combination, to put it mildly.

It's the story of one family and how they changed and evolved over three generations, creating and carrying on their own habits, traditions, and legends. It's deeply fascinating and so very human. Yet it isn't afraid to show quirks in the process, which obviously I loved to bits and pieces.

It's also heartbreaking, seeing one family struggle over generations to find and find their place in this new home. All while others refuse to help make a place for them. Yet for that reason alone, I think this is a book that many others should give a try.

Though once again, I have to emphasize the writing. That is the other reason why I want to suggest this book to others. It really does flow like poetry throughout most, if not all, of the novel, and it is so extremely impressive.

Little descriptors that were simultaneously so incredibly evocative and highly unique made the story into something new, something different. And something that I know I'll remember for quite some time.

I have to be in the right mood to read this book, and right now I'm not. The line between dreams or myths and reality is not just blurred - it doesn't exist.
Very rare for me to say this, but it may be too esoteric for me!

This debut novel was a delight to read. The language is relentlessly metaphorical--there are some really nice things going on at the sentence-level..

Here's a representative sentence:

"Ama's hands were canyoned with calluses, carved out by some river she'd reined in her hands."

I liked this language, and I liked the story. The pacing felt a little off to me. There is a sameness in tone throughout, with little dialog or variation in the sentence beats. I always felt as if I were exactly the same distances from events, and that distance was arms-length.

All that said, though, I enjoyed the slightly unhinged quality of the first-person storytelling very much, and I'll definitely be looking for Chang's next book.

NetGalley approved ARC in exchange for a review.

There are rare books that you find are hunting you and haunt you, so it was when I got a email from a Jessica Bonet at Penguin Randomhouse that offered the ARC for review and I was hooked by the blurb and that intriguing cover. A grandmother's, mother's and daughter's lives mingle and mix, memory for myths.

What is story and what is history is hard to untangle, as the figures of myth get names: Ho Gu Po and Meng Jiang Nu and Mazu/ Mo Nian and Isaw/Old Guang who loves his pirate captain Ah Zheng and their crab daughter Nawi who is the grandmother's mother.

The main storytellers are not named in English, although their lives are full of life, work, bodily reality, and family; fathers, grandfathers, brothers and sisters, aunts (like Dayi) and uncles ("Uncle Duck") but they are grandmother/mother/daughter or Ama, Ma and the daughter who loves Ben, a girl translating the grandmother's stories for her, with her own strange myths of keys and tamed animals. Love, how and who they love, defines them more than names.

There many ways to read this book, as many ways as to read myths for coping with personal/historical tragedy, or as a family history/mythology, so real or imagined story or history this book is like and unlike The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman and The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. I long for more of it's wild story.