Bestiary is about three generations of Taiwanese American women. The mother tells stories to her daughter; about their family, buried gold, tigers and gourd daughters. Then one day, the daughter wakes up with a tiger tail.

This book is not going to be for everyone. The plot is fairly thin, because it's not really about that. To me this book felt more like a "slice of life" story where we just follow the characters and get to know them, written in beautiful prose. The writing is almost poetic, which makes sense in hindsight since the author has written a lot of poetry. But it's also very heavy on symbolism. If I had to guess I'd say it's about 95% symbolism. That's not really a style I usually enjoy (like I said, not for everyone 😉) and is also why I don't read poetry.

I think the symbolism made it beautiful to me on the one hand, but extremely confusing on the other. It's hard to say if the tiger tail was real, for example, or if it's a very elaborate symbol for...I have no idea what. If you read it and figure it out please let me know.

The book is written from three different perspectives, one of which is the grandmother's. In her parts the sentences all run together and I found myself reading it in a kind of rap style and honestly? I loved it.

But even though the prose can be very beautiful it can also be very crass. There's a lot of mention of bodily fluids and holes and definitely not in a fun way.

Sigh. I really wanted to love this as the premise sounded so promising - the Goodreads blurb describes the novel as "a lyrical and electrifying novel of migration, queer lineages and girlhood" - but it was too fantastical and bizarre for my liking. The character development was limited, and it often felt like a string of disconnected events cobbled together into an incoherent narrative. It's also pretty graphic, but in a gratuitous sort of way. The setting wasn't well evoked either. Not for me!

Bestiary is a hard book to review for me. It’s one of those ones that you give 4 stars and then you think, okay but why did I like it so much. And all I can really conclude is that I don’t know why this book — an adult contemporary, you might even say literary fiction, book — did what other literary fiction books failed to do and got me enjoying it.

I think however, what may answer that question, first and foremost, is the writing. I think I’ve mentioned in a previous review that one of the things that puts me off adult general fiction is a tendency towards the grotesque, in that the writing just has to focus on the grossness of life. This book did the same, but it did it in a fabulist, poetic way, so I actually really liked that about it.

The story is a generational saga, following a daughter, a mother and a grandmother, switching back and forth between their POVs as the story unfolds. So you get to learn the motivations of each character through their own eyes, even as you see them through the others’. Which, again, I loved about this. It lets the characters be their own selves, flawed as that often is.

It’s also a weird little story, to be honest. As in, the fabulism of it leans towards less fantastical as you may expect, but oddly fantastical. I don’t know if that makes an ounce of sense, but I really liked that about it. Combine that with the gorgeous writing and it was just a book I didn’t want to put down for one second.

So, really, if this book wasn’t already on your radar, you should definitely rectify that.

Bestiary is a novel about myth, family, immigration, and growing up, weaving together the stories of three generations of Taiwanese American women. Mother's family moved from Taiwan to Arkansas to L.A., but is now estranged from her own mother. She tells Daughter about a tiger spirt named Hu Gu Po who lived in a woman's body, and then Daughter finds herself with a tiger tail. Daughter is also falling in love with a girl, Ben, who has a birdcage containing a shadow bird, and together they try to unravel the secrets of the family, and the life of Daughter's grandmother.

Combining the perspective of two protagonists, Mother and Daughter, with folklore and letters from the estranged grandmother, Bestiary unravels a family's secrets, trauma, and survival in poetic prose. It is a really interesting look at immigrant experiences and lineages of love between women, using folk tales and magical realism to bring stories of two different adolescences and one family's twists and turns. I found some of the fabulist elements hard to keep track of (which is something I personally tend to find with magical realist/folklore-inspired books, especially if I try to read them too fast), but I felt by the end I had caught up enough to appreciate how it was done.

A multi-generational queer magical realist novel, Bestiary is likely to appeal to a lot of people, and has a distinctive writing style that draws you into its world.

This will be much shorter feedback than I usually give - sorry. Thank you for the ARC.

I admired this work a lot, but I did struggle to like it. The interweaving of folk tales, folk memory; the immigrant experience; the LGBT+ experience is deft and impressive. The language is realist and very bodily, and the book reminded me in many ways of Li Ang, Mo Yan and other Chinese writers. I just found it hard to look forward to reading it after a break. I may give it another go in a few months as I can't help but feel there's a lot in this to appreciate.