Koreatown family, unfurled in a warm debut As the mystical plot thickens, the daughter finds letters in those backyard holes that turn out to be written by Grandmother - Ama - long, broken streams of consciousness that fill in the holes in the larger story too.īooks Review: The painful, joyous origin story of an L.A. And they manage both to ground these women’s experiences in tradition and to help them take flight.

The stories of Hu Gu Po and other Taiwanese mythology aren’t used winkingly here: Their physical manifestations are the novel’s reality. Mother tells her children they were munched off by Hu Gu Po,, and it’s this in stories the tiger god that loves children’s toes as much as peanuts. Symbolism is everywhere in “Bestiary,” especially in absent things - holes the missing gold ingot everyone believes Agong, the grandfather, swallowed before immigrating and the mother’s three missing toes. Since the daughter is queer, there’s some symbolism to read into that central mystery. The daughter is particularly confused about the purpose of mysterious holes speckling the family’s California backyard. The bulk of the story takes place not in Taiwan but in Arkansas and California, where the ragtag family struggles to construct a life in a society it doesn’t understand well. Mother literally beats the crap (and urine too) out of the daughter and her brother, with an extra side effect for the daughter: After a particularly savage attack, she grows a tiger’s tail. You’ll never read another book filled with so much excrement and decay, at least until Chang writes her next.įrom the beginning, the reality is harsh and the magic is real in this tale of three women of Taiwanese descent - Grandmother, Mother, Daughter - whose narratives braid the story together. But Chang, a Pushcart Prize-winning poet, brings realism to the forefront of her take on the genre.

Many readers have savored magical realism, which, loosely defined, includes books like “The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez, “The Life of Pi” by Yann Martel and “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. Believe me when I say that’s a good thing. K-Ming Chang’s debut novel, “ Bestiary,” bursts open like delicious fruit on the edge of rot. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

K ming chang bestiary