K-Ming Chang – Chiara Reads

October 2020 wrap up

October is over, the UK is edging toward another lockdown, and it’s time for me to wrap-up another month of reading. Despite thinking I would be reading spooky stuff all month long, it turns out I filled my quota on September or something, because of the thirteen books listed below only two are considered horror; one of them wasn’t scary in the least, and the other was a middlegrade novel. Go me, I guess.

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

Title: Bestiary

Author: K-Ming Chang

Genre: Magical Realism

Year: 2020

Bestiary is the story of three generations of Taiwanese American women, narrated in alternating chapters by Daughter, Mother and Grandmother, and woven with myths and stories from Taiwanese folklore.
One day, Mother tells Daughter the story of Hu Gu Po, a tiger spirit who longed to have a woman’s body and eat children. Soon after, Daughter wakes up with a tiger tail; holes dug in their backyard start to spit out letters from her grandmother; and she slowly falls for another girl, Ben, as they translate the letters together and find out about Daughter’s ancestors and their stories.

I wish I could give a better summary of this story, but it’s honestly so weird that I just don’t know how to do it.