Bestiary: A Novel

"K-Ming Chang’s debut is a kind of compendium of real and mythical beasts — some human, some animal, most a bit of both — that roam through a family’s lineage and the stories its members tell each other from one generation to another. Bestiary’s primary narrator is Daughter, who is trying to understand the gulf between Mother and Grandmother as well as the new tiger tail she’s grown. Everything is alive in this book: The ground grows mouths, rivers become women, roads become rivers, crabs give birth to girlchildren, trees get up and march off in search of lost loves."