brianareads's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Vomit, Blood, Violence, Animal cruelty, Gore, Excrement, and Body horror
readingjaunt's review
5.0
I’ve never read a book with so much pissing in it
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual harassment, Animal death, Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Dementia, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Excrement, Sexual assault, War, Domestic abuse, Gore, Blood, and Violence
maksipad's review
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I like weird books and this fits in that category for sure. The prose was absolutely beautiful and I really loved the story. However, it was also fairly slow and I could only read small chunks of the book before I had to put it back down for awhile. Also, as others have mentioned, there are manyyy bodily function references.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Excrement, Abandonment, War, Xenophobia, Violence, Suicide attempt, Sexual violence, Rape, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Animal death, Blood, Child abuse, Dementia, and Gun violence
Moderate: Gore, Vomit, Murder, and Injury/injury detail
jacq_s's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Vomit, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Physical abuse, Child abuse, and Gore
caleykapowski's review against another edition
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Physical abuse, Blood, Excrement, and Violence
snowwhitehatesapples's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Review can also be found at Snow White Hates Apples.
Brimming with imagery and symbolism, vulgarity and rawness, Bestiary by K-Ming Chang is a familiar story of alienation, resilience and survival told in (while being made unfamiliar by) bizarre prose saturated with magical realism. There are layers upon layers in this story, made complex by two main factors.
The first of which is that there is no traditional plot structure as the story unravels without linearity. It jumps from one point of view to another, switching between Daughter, Mother and Grandmother without much care for order. But, despite this, it is clear that Bestiary is a story of identity, though there’s a notable lack of names.
The other is the significance of vulgarity in this book. Now, I’m not someone who shies away from vulgarity in literature, but there is just way too much of it here. The first half of the book is especially bursting with mentions of body parts and bodily functions. A small part of me hesitantly believes that the closeness of filth and the Asian characters here are meant to be ironic because Asians have been stereotyped as dirty. But, a greater part of me is unsure of their significance within the story and outside of it—the potential contexts elude me despite the familiarity.
Everything considered, this book was difficult for me to read and took a lot out of me while I attempted to understand it. It is powerful, yes, and the parts I did understand broke my heart. Even so, I remain undecided if Bestiary is brilliantly creative or has a tad too much surrealism.
Nevertheless, I recommend this book for anyone who loves Asian literature and magical realism, and who has the brain power to process its rich imagery and symbolism. If you get squeamish easily but really want to read this book, be prepared to take lots of breaks in between pages.
Brimming with imagery and symbolism, vulgarity and rawness, Bestiary by K-Ming Chang is a familiar story of alienation, resilience and survival told in (while being made unfamiliar by) bizarre prose saturated with magical realism. There are layers upon layers in this story, made complex by two main factors.
The first of which is that there is no traditional plot structure as the story unravels without linearity. It jumps from one point of view to another, switching between Daughter, Mother and Grandmother without much care for order. But, despite this, it is clear that Bestiary is a story of identity, though there’s a notable lack of names.
The other is the significance of vulgarity in this book. Now, I’m not someone who shies away from vulgarity in literature, but there is just way too much of it here. The first half of the book is especially bursting with mentions of body parts and bodily functions. A small part of me hesitantly believes that the closeness of filth and the Asian characters here are meant to be ironic because Asians have been stereotyped as dirty. But, a greater part of me is unsure of their significance within the story and outside of it—the potential contexts elude me despite the familiarity.
Everything considered, this book was difficult for me to read and took a lot out of me while I attempted to understand it. It is powerful, yes, and the parts I did understand broke my heart. Even so, I remain undecided if Bestiary is brilliantly creative or has a tad too much surrealism.
Nevertheless, I recommend this book for anyone who loves Asian literature and magical realism, and who has the brain power to process its rich imagery and symbolism. If you get squeamish easily but really want to read this book, be prepared to take lots of breaks in between pages.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Dysphoria, and Excrement
Moderate: Blood, Domestic abuse, and Gore
Minor: Racism and Suicide attempt
leah_alexandra's review
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This was a really strange and beautiful book. I didn’t love it, but I can appreciate it for what it was.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Excrement, Xenophobia, Death, Violence, Vomit, Chronic illness, Sexual content, Abandonment, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Cursing, and Domestic abuse
abithereader's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Pregnancy, Body horror, Blood, and Excrement
mandkips's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, and Excrement
Moderate: Gore and Domestic abuse
porge_grewe's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This is a difficult one to review. How do you rate such a well-crafted, interesting, good book which requires such a strong stomach to get through? Much of this book is unpleasant – deliberately and skilfully unpleasant – and that will put a lot of readers off. If you click with the style, however, or if you dial in to the point where it is no longer overwhelming, you will be rewarded with a thoughtful, funny, sad, and true book.
Bestiary is about a lot of things. The points of view K-Ming Chang uses, following three generations of a family emigrating from Taiwan to the United States, provide a focus on family, bodies, love, and myth-making, and, through these, more varied discussion of warfare, domestic violence, abject poverty, queer love and experience, growing up, legacy, land and belonging, and all sort of other topics. Chang, or rather her characters, consider all these using a style which moves between a straightforward, child-like simplicity and poetic surrealism, often melding the two to provide a bizarre, child’s-eye-view of a mundane world, or perhaps a sober, adult view of a magical one. In many ways, this feels most like a book about magic. Not pretty magic, and not necessarily magic in which any of the protagonists actually want to engage, but magic nonetheless. It would put me in mind of a mix of Helen Oyeyemi’s What is Not Yours is Not Yours and Stephen Graham Jones’ Mongrels if Bestiary did not feel so much its own creation.
A large part of this individual identity for Bestiary come from its view of the world. Chang renders the world as elements and animals and bodies – Different members of the family are salt or rivers or earth or birds or fish or tigers at various points and the physicality of bodies, their orifices, and the many and various fluids which those orifices dribble, leak, and squirt are fundamentally interwoven into their experience of the world, their histories, and each other. Again, this will be too much for some, perhaps many, readers, but it creates a truly human, animal way of being in the world in which the books more mythological and folkloric elements take shape and marinate. In that way, I have seen few more resonant depictions of childhood.
Massive kudos also to Jinhwa Jang for making one of the most striking and fitting covers I have seen in a while.
This is a grimy, beautiful, abrasive, feral, wise book and if you feel you have the constitution for it then I strongly recommend trying it out.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse and Excrement
Moderate: War and Racism