I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of 5 star books recently. I picked up Strange Beasts of China after seeing it at a tiny bookstore in Murphys, CA (Books on Main!). I liked the moon cover, with its extra-terrestrial hue. I thought this would be a scifi novel, but instead it was a fantastical epic about the city of Yong’an.
Strange Beasts of China is part noir, part mystery, part folklore in all the best ways. The narrator, an amateur cryptozoologist who dropped out of university, makes her money as a romance author. But she also does a weekly article about the different species of creatures that live in the city. As we learn about her writing process each week, we learn about her relationships with
- the professor, whose program she dropped out of
- her deceased mother
- her good friend Charley
- her precious niece Lucia and
- the new research assistant of the professor who keeps bothering her.
Yan Ge’s writing is dreamlike and poetic. It feels like another universe, while being the modern day. We float along with the narrator, discovering what she knows and how she knows it. I can’t recommend this enough.
I also have to shout out Jeremy Tiang: the translator. He did an incredible job! The language is flowery and mystical and dreamy. I really loved it. I will probably never know what the original story is like: the only lens I have to understand it is through the words and perspective of Tiang. Whatever he added or took away or filtered was lovely.
My favorite quotes:
“Every story is someone else’s myth. Life holds no pleasant surprises for us, only nasty shocks.”
“Children are like that. They think life is as beautiful as a flower. But Lucia would grow up, and come to understand that sometimes living feels like chewing on wax. And so you let go. The more resilient life is, the more you want to destroy it, raze it to the ground, put on a show, all guns blazing, what joy.”
Strange Beasts of China makes you wonder: who are the beasts? Humans are so cruel and unkind and sadistic. Beasts are what they are. Who gets to draw the line between beast and human? Civilized and uncivilized? American and Alien? Chinese and not?