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A review by betweenbookends
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
1.0
I had high expectations for Bestiary based on its premise. It is marketed as a mythological, magical realist novel following a Taiwanese-American family’s queer history with a particular focus on its women. However, my reading experience was far more muted, possibly even disappointing. I’m not entirely sure what K-Ming Chang’s intention was with this narrative. If it was to tell a story of immigration, lineage and personal history, I’m not sure if it’s entirely successful.
The narration switches between the Mother and the Daughters' perspectives, interspersed with letters from the Grandmother. The storytelling is saturated with surrealism, so much so that the main plot arc is nearly lost in the multiple myths and magical realist fables woven in. Adding to the obscurity of the plot is Chang’s writing style itself which felt disjointed and bloated, straddling the border between prose and poetry, realism and surrealism, not quite achieving either.
Chang is first and foremost a poet, and it clearly shows. There is so much imagery at play here, whilst some of it was really quite inventive, there was also plenty of imagery and symbolism that just felt really odd. She seemed to have a curious fascination for bodily secretions and the more gross, baser functions of the body and it oftentimes appeared in instances where it made no sense. For example, there was a line where she writes of warplanes dropping bombs as ‘anuses that dilated open and shat bombs, spraying diarrhea that scarred your skin’. Really? Are we really talking warplane anuses here? And I’m only scratching the surface, there’s a lot of really strange imagery that, more often than not, didn’t work for me. There wasn’t much character development either and I was often getting confused with who’s who, the motivations behind their actions and the inner conflicts, mere guesswork.
I know I’ve made it seem like there is no redeeming quality to this book and it’s not the case. Certain sections and fables were very well written as standalone pieces. For me, personally, the novel just wasn’t cohesive enough, the characters really not distinctive from one another and the main thrust of the novel lost under the overbearing weight of its obscure imagery.
The narration switches between the Mother and the Daughters' perspectives, interspersed with letters from the Grandmother. The storytelling is saturated with surrealism, so much so that the main plot arc is nearly lost in the multiple myths and magical realist fables woven in. Adding to the obscurity of the plot is Chang’s writing style itself which felt disjointed and bloated, straddling the border between prose and poetry, realism and surrealism, not quite achieving either.
Chang is first and foremost a poet, and it clearly shows. There is so much imagery at play here, whilst some of it was really quite inventive, there was also plenty of imagery and symbolism that just felt really odd. She seemed to have a curious fascination for bodily secretions and the more gross, baser functions of the body and it oftentimes appeared in instances where it made no sense. For example, there was a line where she writes of warplanes dropping bombs as ‘anuses that dilated open and shat bombs, spraying diarrhea that scarred your skin’. Really? Are we really talking warplane anuses here? And I’m only scratching the surface, there’s a lot of really strange imagery that, more often than not, didn’t work for me. There wasn’t much character development either and I was often getting confused with who’s who, the motivations behind their actions and the inner conflicts, mere guesswork.
I know I’ve made it seem like there is no redeeming quality to this book and it’s not the case. Certain sections and fables were very well written as standalone pieces. For me, personally, the novel just wasn’t cohesive enough, the characters really not distinctive from one another and the main thrust of the novel lost under the overbearing weight of its obscure imagery.