Bestiary

A Novel

paperback, 288 pages

Published June 1, 2021 by One World.

ISBN:
978-0-593-13259-3
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5 stars (2 reviews)

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.

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 afterwards, 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 …

1 edition

Poetic, highly surreal, visceral, violent, but also very funny

5 stars

This is probably one of the strangest books I've ever read, in a good way - but not for the faint-hearted.

Poetic, highly surreal, visceral, violent, explicit about everything bodily, shocking, but also very funny at the same time. I think (but could be wrong) a lot of the often gruesome violence has its origins in the Tayan (Taiwan's indigenous people) myths that pervade the storytelling.

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5 stars