I don’t think our readership would jive with this debut of Chang’s; I found it to be dark and a little crude for our audience.

***Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC***

I had a hard time getting through this book, largely due to its style. While the subject matter, three generations of Taiwanese American women, was right up my alley, I struggled with the mythical aspect of the writing. Chang weaves the mystical all throughout, but if you think this makes it a fairy-light read, you'd be mistaken. The language is brutal. It's fully of piss and shit; rage and desire; and violence in all of its forms. It's unpretty in the most useful way, and I think this threw me for a loop oftentimes because the in-your-face sentences somehow still added up to create a dreamy landscape. The dissonance of it all is jarring, and yet it was worth reading for the odd sentence that knocked me off my feet in its perfection. There are true gems here if you are patient enough to persevere.

In her abstract debut, K Ming Chang blurs the line between animal and human as she travels through three generations of Taiwanese folklore. Telling the story of Ben and her lover, "Bestiary" is an exploration of what it means to be a human. Turning anthropomorphism on its head, Chang instead explores what it would be like to be an animal with human tendencies, how love transverses bodies and physicality and seeks something much deeper inside. A fun, brief read that will leave you in wonder!