Bestiary

A Novel

By: K-Ming Chang

Narrated by: Catherine Ho, Nancy Wu, Ren Hanami

Length: 9 hrs

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE •

Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about one family’s queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets.

“Gorgeous and gorgeously grotesque.... Every line of this sensuous, magical-realist marvel is utterly alive.” (O: The Oprah Magazine)

FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews  

One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterward, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighborhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother’s letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth - and that she will have to bring her family’s secrets to light in order to change their destiny.

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.

Praise for Bestiary

“[A] vivid, fabulist debut...the prose is full of imagery. Chang’s wild story of a family’s tenuous grasp on belonging in the U.S. stands out with a deep commitment to exploring discomfort with the body and its transformations.” (Publishers Weekly)

©2020 K-Ming Chang (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Its prose is relentlessly, ruthlessly corporeal, and it is fearlessly beautiful. Told from the point of view of Daughter, a Taiwanese American early-adolescence girl, the book deftly threads together three generations of women with each other, land, water, trauma, violence, and love...." (Lambda Literary) 

“A visceral book that promises a major new literary voice.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

"[A] vivid, fabulist debut ... the prose is full of imagery. Chang’s wild story of a family’s tenuous grasp on belonging in the U.S. stands out with a deep commitment to exploring discomfort with the body and its transformations.” (Publishers Weekly)

Beautiful, Highly Stylized, Not A Casual Read

A visceral, lyrical story about the experiences of a Taiwanese family and three generations of women within it. I was initially drawn to this story for the queer romance, which ended up being my favorite part. The relationships between each of the family members is portrayed subtly through metaphor and action, they're the strongest elements of the story.

I did personally find the performance of the grandmother's sections in the audiobook to be a touch overbearing. But that's just a matter of personal taste; the narrative literally states that the grandmother's letters should be imagined in a raspy, croaky voice, so I think the direction taken in the audio makes sense.

Confusing and boring plot

Made it about 3hrs into the book and had to give up. The plot was boring, too much, and strange all at the same time. skip this title.

WTF, Sorry Oprah!!

I'm a huge fan of the "grotesque" which is a word Oprah used to describe this book, which is more than distorted or ugly or strange. I find it more forcefully gross so the author can just get some attention and sell a few books. It might help to know about Chinese) Taiwanese culture/myths/folklore etc. as I'm guessing that's what these bizarre images are talking about, but there's no explanation to the meanings. It certainly doesn't make me want to learn more about the culture with everything being pretty foul. The book is very disjointed and hard to wrap your head around.

Wow

This book reads like no other I have read. It was dense. Thick with lore and myth and visceral and family and chaos and trauma and madness and bodies. I could only listen 15 minutes at a time, but it was worth it.

struggled to get through it

I just could not understand the point of stories. My most common reaction: ewe! Second most common "what the ..."