RaveSlantAt 22 years old, K-Ming Chang writes with a wisdom well beyond her years ... her prose doesn’t fall far from the poetic tree. That’s very much evident in her intense focus on language, use of blank space, and the visceral images that she conjures throughout the book. As she traces her characters’ lives, marked by poverty, abuse, immigration, war, queer love, and magic, we’re tasked with embracing myth and confronting certain hard truths ... As Bestiary untangles a complicated family lineage, the influence of Maxine Hong Kingston is felt. Indeed, Chang’s combination of folklore, mythology, family history with the experience of assimilating to a new culture is a nice nod to Kingston’s most famous works. An easy comparison to make, yes, but that isn’t to say Chang is a copycat, only that she uses similar tools to effectively tell her own story. Her experience as a poet is ever-present in the novel’s prose—in how shockingly perfect her line breaks are, how every simile forces you to pause for a moment, how she uses tools like blank space in Ama’s letters to develop character and voice. The reader can sense every stutter on the page, every instance where translation is lost ... It’s as a modern story of American assimilation, queer love, and coming of age that Bestiary is most resonant ... Chang’s mix of the real and the surreal allows for a sense of hope while also presenting a vivid story of abuse and assimilation within one’s family, and within the larger scope of one’s country. Bestiary is about the echoes of yesterday butting heads with the realities of today, and the work of a young writer whose stories I hope will continue to grab us in the years to come.
Jenny Offill
RaveSlant MagazineAs many authors try to capture the period we live in, the anxieties we face within ourselves and as a larger whole—by, say, referencing such hot-button issues as climate change and economic disparity—Offill places herself within the conversation without being overbearing, without shouting too loudly ... [Ofill] knows subtlety, and knows how to create a tone that will make us laugh, pull at our heart strings, and, above all, genuinely surprise us. But most importantly, she knows how create a form which elucidates the way we perceive the everyday. It’s a perfect time in American life to have a writer like Offill, whose idea of a novel seems the most conducive to replicating our daily lives from the minor burdens, which can feel like Shakespearean tragedies, to our widely shared conflicts, those which are ignored and then ignored until they boil over.
Nell Zink
RaveSlant...a wide-spreading mural portraying the lives of an American family ... Zink’s use of the third-person enables her to dance from character to character, one paragraph after the other ... Zink never sticks with one character for longer than a page at a time, building a pace which isn’t unlike that of her characters, so quick-witted and always in motion, questioning their lives and relationships but united as a family, manifested through their shared space on the page ... Reminiscent of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Zink’s language has a melodic quality, her long, crisp sentences enhanced by precise punctuation and smart alliteration. Every character is fast-talking and ceaselessly witty; they appear to be performing like the musicians they desire to become, their use of language a kind of instrument ... She shows why she’s one of America’s great contemporary novelists through her sharp shift of focus, capturing a multitude of landscapes from the wide vistas of American music and politics, to the finer details of sustainable farming, computer programming, and D.C. parks. The wealth of knowledge that Zink brings to her novel is generous ... Zink’s writing remains enthralling in spite of not seeing all of her conflicts fully through to their ends.
