This follows three generations of a Taiwanese family through a folkloric narrative. It is imaginative and complex. There are moments of profound knowing in some of the writing, deserving of several noted passages. Then it's almost a stream of consciousness with boogers., Shat and ejaculate featured. My favorite parts were centered around the exploring sensuality and the grandmother's story. The letters from the grandmother were difficult to read but added to the mythology of the plot. The stream of consciousness psychedelic rants about snake. Babies and other far out things didn't work for me.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

When Mother tells Daughter the story of Hu Gu Po, Daughter wakes up with a tiger's tail. Mysterious events occur in the family as Daughter starts falling for Ben, a girl with powers of her own. The two translate the grandmother's letters, and soon they realize that each woman in her family embodies a myth. Family secrets will have to be revealed to save their destinies.

This story is lyrical, with magic and myth accepted as reality. In a world like this, a girl having a tiger tail is a reasonable reality. "The grass was a ghost of its former green" and similar phrases are the mainstay of the language in this book, melodic words to evoke the pains of poverty and separation between family members, generations or nations. There's a difference between Taiwan and the mainland, and differences between the states the family had lived in while in the United States. Relationships between the generations are strained, yet the ties that draw them together remain in place even with their absences and resentments.

I read this novel much more slowly than usual. Partly this was to absorb the language, which is more like prose poetry, and partly to really visualize what it all meant. As with poetry, there can be multiple meanings to the words chosen, to the events as described. Sometimes the stories within the overall story are like allegories, and it's not the literal meaning that has to be understood. Each of the women here, grandmother, mother, and daughter, have no names but their relationships in the generations. There is a cycle of domestic violence, suppressed rage, frustrated desires and the element of queerness that runs throughout the family. Daughter's love for Ben, another daughter of immigrants, is an organic process and accepted by Mother. Perhaps because she's accepted as she is and Mother doesn't try to change her, she has fewer violent impulses, for all that she's the one with the tiger's tail.

The pervasive sense of loss and distance from family is something that really resonated with me. Families change shape and sometimes lose their own stories when they leave a home country, which was done multiple times within these generations. That loss is a violence of its own kind and has long-reaching effects. In this novel, it's poetically described, but I have hope for Daughter's future being better as she takes possession of the past in her own way.

Est-il possible pour un auteur d'avoir trop d'imagination ? À la lecture de Bestiary, c'est l'impression que j'ai eue.

La couverture ne m'inspirait pas des masses, mais j'ai lu "Three generations of Taiwanese American women" dans la description et ça m'a suffi. Cinq mots après, "myths" aurait dû m'inspirer méfiance, mais je me suis dit que ce serait supportable. Si j'avais vu que l'autrice était poète, je n'aurais pas essayé.

Alors, de quoi Bestiary parle-t-il ? Je n'en sais rien ! Il y avait une histoire de trous, de liquides et de sécrétions de toute sorte qui entrent et sortent par une série d'orifices. Et des épisodes très violents. Je voulais lire ce roman parce qu'il parlait d'immigrés aux États-Unis. C'est la seule chose qui m'a intéressée en fait. Mais c'est perdu dans un tel amas d'histoires sans queue (contrairement à un personnage) ni tête que cet aspect n'a pas "sauvé" le roman pour moi. Sur Goodreads, je viens de lire les explications de l'auteur. Je comprends mieux ce qu'elle a voulu faire et j'ai l'impression d'être passée complètement à côté. Ou bien ce n'était pas du tout pour moi. J'ai terminé les 272 pages en me forçant beaucoup à la fin.

It is obvious Chang is a poet because her words are stunning and arresting in both the best and most uncomfortable ways. I didn't always know what was going on in the moment, but the story did coalesce by the end. This won't be a book for everyone. If you're into magic realism, nonlinear narratives, and an author well worth the label poet, this will be a compelling book.

A lot of other reviewers have described this book as ‘weird’ and that pretty much sums up my thoughts on it too.

Bestiary follows three generations of Taiwanese American women who discover they embody the myths that they grew up learning about.

I don’t read a ton of magical realism, and I’ll be completely honest here, I didn’t always know what was going on in this story. There are holes in the yard that need to be fed, a woman who gives birth to a goose, and a little girl who is growing a tiger tail. These fantastical elements added a lot to the story, and while some of things really seem out-of-left-field, they’re what makes the story so unique.

Some of the descriptions are graphic and there’s a heavy focus on bodily fluids that I wasn’t super fond of. It felt like the first chapter mentioned shit and piss in almost every paragraph. I assume some people don’t mind that too much, but it’s not really my style.

I haven’t read anything else by K-Ming Chang, but I’m interested in reading some of her poetry after reading this.

A powerfully poetic and visceral book. Haunting truthful in the way that only immigrant fiction can be. I deeply appreciate the blend of memory, mythos, and migratory awareness, so embedded in the experience of generations of women.

Wow wow WOW! Some of the most visceral writing I've ever had the pleasure (and sometimes discomfort, TBH) of reading. I was not surprised to learn Chang is a published poet; her turns of phrase were exquisite. I loved the use of storytelling and folklore in this novel, and I will absolutely read her next novel.

I loved the idea of this book. The mythology of Taiwan, and the embodiment of each woman in Daughter’s family of one of the myths was intriguing, and drew me to this book.

I wish the writing would have been better. The author is a poet first, and her prose is just a bit too symbolic- to the point it was overwrought. Add the stream of consciousness style, and the use of muck and filth as attractive, and I got lost.

I liked the fusion of myth and reality, but I felt they got lost in the need to be disgusting.

This just wasn’t for me.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley.

2 stars

Bestiary follows a Tawainese American family through three generations of women. When Daughter hears the story of Hu Gu Po, the spirit of a tiger who embodies women and feasts on children’s toes, she wakes up the next morning with a tail. She and her brother dig holes in the backyard and discover they can send and receive letters from their grandmother through them. Daughter befriends and falls for a girl at school, Ben, who has powers of her own. Each generation struggles with abusiveness, and Mother and Daughter will have to stand together to break the cycle. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Random House. Trigger warnings: death, cannibalism, abuse/abusive households, severe illness, injury, racism, incontinence.

For some reason, I was pre-approved to read this novel through NetGalley. I got an e-mail saying hey, we’re sending you this book you didn’t ask for, and I was like okay, I guess, why not? (Rough paraphrase.) When I got to the part in the description that reads “a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly,” I was like YUP, this might be a book for me. It’s as weird as advertised, and I doubt I understood half of what went on in it, which is fine. Understanding is overrated. But don’t read on expecting a particularly smart or coherent review. Instead, as always, here are some impressions.

The weirdness in this book is top-tier. I always hesitate to apply the term magical realism for fear that I’m using it wrong, but that’s really what it felt like most to me, in a very Gabriel García Márquez way (though maybe not quite that dreamy and meandering). Strange things happen: Daughter grows a tail, people give birth to animals, a series of holes in the backyard become mouths. I’m sure they’re all metaphors for something, but they’re also concretely real, not just the imaginings of our child narrator. In true magical real style, the characters treat this strangeness as a matter of course and more or less go about their lives. The mythology aspects are cool, and the story of Hu Gu Po has a special significance for the family.

I struggled to find a central narrative, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the chapters feel as though they could function as short stories, in particular the titular chapter “Bestiary,” which felt like one of the most polished, cohesive sections of the novel. Most of them center on Daughter, with occasional looks into Mother or Grandmother’s history and how it affects the present. It’s generational but also fragmented in the way that human relationships often are, particularly since Grandmother’s abusiveness has created distance between her and the others. In contrast, Mother and Daughter’s relationship is complex and almost overlapping, like they at times can’t separate themselves from one another, and it felt very genuine. Daughter’s relationship with a girl from school, Ben, is also complicated, at times sweet and perplexing.

The language of the novel is heavily focused on bodies or comparing bodies to beasts, most obviously with Daughter’s tail, which seems like a metaphor for wildness. I’m sure there’s some analysis to do in there about materiality and the way we exist and take up space–the way some people–women, immigrants, people of color–are encouraged not to take up space. The imagery is heavy-handed and often gross: perfectly healthy characters wetting themselves, descriptions comparing nature to less seemly body parts, spitting and child birth and bodily fluids of all kinds. I’m sure it’s meant to be off-putting, but it’s not a literary device I particularly enjoy. I wanted more out of the ending, but I suspect most of the failing is mine. I followed what happened but couldn’t quite grasp the significance of it, and it left me feeling like it was all leading up to… not very much, really. I think it’s worth picking up though. It’s helpful to read novels from time to time that we don’t quite know what to make of.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

There were so many things I loved about this book, which is why I got nearly halfway through it before shelving it for good. The language and imagery is so strong and vibrant in a way that was intoxicating at times, but overwhelming more often than not. The crude descriptions of human existence, while not inaccurate, were too much for me in the end, and I couldn’t enjoy my favorite parts enough to get through the passages that turned my stomach.

Bestiary is a book that holds the narrative of not just one character but several, weaving stories of the past with those of the present and sharing wisdom and life experiences from one generation to another. The book begins with Mother telling a story of warning to her Only Daughter, and it is obvious that storytelling is the main way Mother teaches Daughter about life and how to move through it as a woman.

Reading the synopsis left me not quite sure what to expect from this book, and so I went into it with an open mind and curiosity that I would encourage other readers to approach it with as well. It's not an easy or heart-warming read by any means; however, it does give us a glimpse of what it might be like to come from a family that has immigrated to America for a better life, and how bittersweet it must be to leave your homeland and all that you know of life and raise children in a foreign land.

Folklore and myths are the mode of communication between generations to convey what has happened in their lives, and often something a little out of the ordinary occurs that may be just a tall tale, or magical-realism at its most real. This book reads like some sort of fairy-tale inside of a dream with Daughter finding that she has grown the tail of a tiger, and stories about a woman that bites off the toes of unsuspecting children. This isn't your typical novel that you can kick back and enjoy, and it won't be everyone's cup of tea; however, for the more adventurous reader this is a book that will fill the gaps in your bookshelf that more mundane titles just can't fill.

Review of Digital Advance Reading Copy

I know next to nothing about Taiwanese folklore so I was excited to read the ARC of Bestiary. This is a unique adult novel about three generations of Taiwanese American women and their struggle to fit in to a new country while staying true to the culture of their homeland. Chang writes in a very gritty, graphic style that brings the life of these women into stark reality. Mysterious events happen one after another - Daughter wakes with a tiger tail, her aunt arrives from Taiwan with snakes living in her belly, and the holes peppering their back yard start revealing letters written by the Grandmother instead of the gold hidden by Grandfather years before. As Daughter tries to translate the letters, she meets and fall in love with Ben, a girl from the neighborhood shrouded in mystery herself. Daughter falls in love with Ben as they work on the letters and find that Daughter has to bring the family secrets to light to change their destiny.

Bestiary is an intriguing first novel - vividly written and full of magic and lore, as well as stark representation of life for immigrants to the U.S.

“If we stayed in here, she said, and the water kept outgrowing us, what do you think would happen? I told her we’d drown, but Ben said I was wrong. We’d grow gills, she said.”

K-Ming Chan’s ambitious debut novel, Bestiary, tells a remarkably complex story of cultural displacement, intergenerational conflict, familial trauma, poverty, and queer desire (among other themes – the list could go on). Daughter, a first generation Taiwanese American, battles domestic strife through a narrative laden with distortion, giving rise to a story sheathed by Asian mythologies, heavy imagery and metaphor, and magical realism, presented throughout in stream of consciousness verse. Stripped of these devices, Bestiary is a story of girlhood not uncommon to queer immigrant audiences.

Chan’s narrative gains its distinctness through the explosion of detail realized in each sentence of every page. The reader finds their footing through the sensory navigation of Daughter’s coming-of-age experiences as she traverses difficult situations – from bearing witness to the outbursts of her temperamental Mother to the few-and-far-between interactions with her distant father – finding solace in a relationship with Ben, a female classmate, whose companionship offers new possibilities.

Admittedly I found this novel to be difficult to access through the denseness of the author’s writing style, although there’s no denying Chan’s gift of writing complex and intensely poetic prose. Lyrical, vulgar, frenetic, and bizarre, Bestiary is nothing less than a living, breathing organism made into novel form.

Thank you to One World and Netgalley for this illuminating read!

Bestiary is equal parts fantastical and crude in its language. The stories used to teach and to worn blend together with the everyday lives of a family suffering from modern Chinese diaspora. They are struggling to make enough for survival in this strange new land that they call home. However, when the fantastical and the mundane mix and people start growing tails and following up on their animal instincts, sometimes it is hard to tell where the folklore begins and ends.

I really wanted to enjoy this more than I did. The language is a little too crude for my personal tastes. I can handle it in small doses, but this story has, for me, what would be considered a bit of an excessive amount. Also, since I was so busy grimacing from some of the language it made me sort of keep the characters and their story away from me at arms length. Sort of like the mother and the beggars in the story (which is something that actually does happen in China btw). So, it's hard for me to say whether or not I truly enjoyed this novel when interesting, bizarre, and grotesque are really the words that come to mind.

Based on the cover image and description, this book sounded like something I would love and yet, I didn’t. I tried! I tried really hard to love it but came away feeling like it was awkward and overly childish. Squiggy is a good description for some of the actions in the book made me feel. The authors writing can be really great but some passages were too much that I don’t fit with the narrator. Some descriptions were really beautiful and then some were just very very juvenile to the point where I’d stop reading (and I’m the parent to a boy so it takes a lot...)

DNF @ 19%

I really didn’t want to do this; it’s obvious K-Ming Chang is a talented writer, and I don’t doubt the value of this book. But between the general lack of a plot, the bizarrely grotesque descriptions, and my inability to connect with the characters for some reason...idk, I found myself wanting to read something else.

In Bestiary, Chang bends words and employs language to create mythic worlds to explore queer and matriarchal lineage. It is a world where tigers eat children, where children are swallowed by rivers, where snakes slither and feed on soldiers who are the carnage of war, where rabbit fetuses are released from supernatural orifices of a grandfather haunted by war, and where snakes extend like outgrowths from a child's crotch and crane out for food like the tips of medusa's hair. Honestly, a lot of it feels very esoteric. I waded through the book asking myself what the mythologies raked out from the daughter's lineage was meant to represent. The imagery is very visceral. In its meditation on lineage, I appreciated that the body becomes a vessel for story in ways that only the body's memory could recover, in ways language may not be able to completely encapsulate. Mythology as an aesthetic to explores queerness and novelty; in progeny; in daughters, I think is very brilliant.

I felt like the interpolation of voice by mother, grandmother, and daughter, was very awkwardly ordered. Parsing through grandmother's letters felt like bushwhacking through unmapped, uncharted hinterlands. We're forced to figure out the very intimate and poetic language of grandmother's memories before knowing very much of her story, which is given more flesh at the end. I appreciated daughter's story because it was the only one not spoken in allegorized memory. It felt like breathing room in the middle of a thicket, and wished there was more of it. I think Chang has an incredibly unique voice and don't believe I've read anything like it in prose.

Magical realism meets Taiwanese American immigrant story in this coming-of-age family saga that includes intense mother-daughter drama, surreal human-animal romances, plenty of bodily fluids, and a budding lesbian relationship. It’s rare that a novel has both gorgeously poetic writing and an engaging plot, but Bestiary has both, engrossing the reader in a world of myths, family, wars, trauma, and healing. This book is great for fans of Jeanette Winterson and Helen Oyeyemi.

𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐓𝐨 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐠 𝐚 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐝. 𝐁𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧.

Generational history, fabrications, mythology and wildly imaginative tales entertain the readers of 𝘉𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘳𝘺 until its ‘tail’ end. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for the characters here to pour salt on festering wounds of their elders, like Ba (Agong) – whose memory is nothing but snakes. Fleeing their homeland, learning the strange new customs of the Western world, remembering rivers that swallowed young men during war and leaving behind firstborn children to birth new ones… this is the cage, the past that the Taiwanese women carry in this family.

With Ma (Ama) searching for the gold (their future, security) Ba ‘misplaced’ along with his mind, their daughters are digging holes in the earth searching. This is the freedom they first learn on new shores. It’s a strange inheritance, a pit of loss, a collision of cultures. They cannot outrun their buried shadows, as we follow three generations of women. They know too well how to scratch the earth, much like chickens, trying to make a living.

Now a mother with her own family, Ma lives in a city far enough away from Ama and Agong that she is close enough for their needs and yet comforted by the distance. With a main lander husband, more disappointment than good fortune, she waits for his checks to pay their rent while their son and daughter dig into the earth, waiting to see what it will give birth to. Feeding their heads with fantastical tales like that of Hu Gu Po (a tiger spirit that longs to be human, attained only by feasting on the toes of children) is it any shock that Daughter wakes up with a Tiger’s tail herself? Her own mother’s price were her toes, stubs now. When father lets them down, is away with the kites, Duck Uncle steps in, but nothing good can last. In Daughter, hungers rise that must be named and fed. It is beside her friend Ben “the one who’d come halfway through the year and could spit a watermelon seed so fair it skipped the sea and planted in another country” exploring each other’s blossoming bodies, that her tiger heart soars. Ben whom she shows the holes in their backyard to. Ben is a willing captive, befriending the wild beast she is becoming.

The stories are meant to save the daughters by serving as warnings but in the end Ama, Mother and Daughter are the same story, looking only for a cure, ‘which is to survive’. Survive the snakes in the river, the soldiers, lies, ghosts, the dead and anything that lives off a woman’s body. Then there are Alma’s mysterious letters, a bit like riddles, written to her eldest child first, as if she’s a corpse. A daughter whose father was imprisoned, accused of being a ‘red father’, the reason that the entire family must avoid shoelaces, like a curse.

Ama’s daughters have been made unclean by holy hands, they are born laughing, tying knots or meant for America- a strange type of afterlife. Husbands and men seem to be ‘synonymous with the missing’, either through imprisonment, abandonment or buried by their own scrambled minds. Ama’s husbands, soldiers always, aren’t the true fighters, it is Ama- the only country Agong ever needed. Ama’s warnings to her grandchild about keeping ginger root between her knees to ‘ward off boys’ isn’t so much corruption as security. Ama knows the truth of why Daughter digs holes in her yard, these instincts are in the marrow of her family’s bones.

Ma’s stories may not be as full of soldiers as Ama’s but there are always wars and struggles, living with her sister Jie, Ba and Ama in Arkansas until debts could be paid. Then to California, it’s cleaning houses, factories, fires and her beloved sister Jie fleeing the main story. With her tail twitching mean, Daughter longs to understand what her mother is trying to tell her, what Ama’s letters explain, better to return them to the holes in the ground. Did Ama feed her daughters to the river? Is she trying to kill off Agong? Can Ama ever be forgiven? Is fluency really about forgetting? Is the price of having a body really hunger? Is it wrong, the hunger Daughter feels for Ben? What are they digging for? Truth, treasure, memories? Can you dig too deep?

A beguiling, bizarre novel about family history as folktale- an engaging, unique debut!

Publication Date: September 8, 2020

Random House

One World

A Bestiary starts off talking copiously about 'shit' (of the fecal variety), 'piss', 'boogers' and the narrator's sister being 'fingered' at the diner where she works. And doesn't seem to let up on its juvenile crudeness and vulgarity. Like a six year old obsessed with bodily functions and fluids insistent on regaling their audience about poop, pee, snot and vagina/penis.

Hopefully children don't think of doing this to their fathers:

"I think about bringing the broomstick down on Ba’s body, beating him soft as peach meat, parsing through his bird-shy bones to find whatever gold is still bobbing in his belly."

This is how mother passes on family history:
"You’ve never met your great-aunts because they die faster than I can remember their names:"
Yup, charming.

More wholesome family winsomeness:
"In the photo on the card table, Ma is pregnant with Jie and holding two babies like they’re grenades with the pins pulled out. She’s waiting for this picture to be taken so she can throw them far out of frame."

Onto folklore and mythology also bedtime stories by mother of the year. A tiger spirit in a woman's body has an unusual craving: "With her teeth, she unscrewed the toes of sleeping daughters and sucked the knuckles clean of meat, renaming them peanuts." " The next morning, every child in the village woke with a toe subtracted from each foot."

While I enjoy reading Journey to the West retellings and love mythic fiction, this one just got mired in more and more excrement literally. With the liberal amounts of gratuitous violence and sex thrown into A Bestiary, I might as well go watch some TV. It's quite disappointing because reading the blurb, I was expecting something completely different. Three generations of Taiwanese women, Chinese mythology, immigration, queerness should have made an intriguing tale. Instead I felt the author merely aimed to shock and tintillate.
If this is a young writer's attempt at edgy storytelling then I'll pass, thanks.

Because this was an ARC kindly provided by One World and Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review, I tried to slog on for as long as possible but it's a DNF for me.