Review: Bestiary

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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.

I had a copy of the book from the publisher through NetGalley; it comes out September 29.

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