A review by lucky_stars
Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

 I want to get my hands on the original Chinese since I definitely feel like some things had to be lost in translation. (Even if my Chinese isn’t the best, I’d be willing to struggle for this if I get the extra money to purchase a copy of 异兽志). 
 
Although I might also be saying that because I spent a good portion of the book feeling like I was missing something.  Sometimes things connected in ways that seemed impossible since the supposed conclusion reached in one story was contradicted in another.  
 
The narrator’s relationship with the professor was one that endlessly confused me, even as it intrigued me.  At times I thought they were lovers, other times just more disappointed mentor and student,
and with the Heartsick Beasts story maybe literal creator and invention
.  The only consistency was the very unhealthy relationship, a common thread in a book that blurs the line between what it means to be beastly.  (Lucia is perfect though and I won’t hear a word against her.) 
 
The beasts are brilliantly constructed, although repetitive at times since there is so much death and melancholy. My favorite stories were the Impasse Beasts, the Heartsick Beasts, and the Flourishing Beasts.  
 
The setting of Yong’an is hard to pin down.  Most of the time is spent in either the Dolphin Bar or the narrator’s apartment, with a whole lot of un-described mostly unremarkable restaurants that Zhong Liang drags her to.  However, despite this, I couldn’t offer a description of any of these locations.  There are references to more concrete areas when talking about where the beasts live that are more conversational.  These places feel real and made me feel like the narrator was letting me in on some deep secret. The timeline is similarly opaque. You’re left in this timeless place where the only way you can track things is based on subtle hits from secondary characters (their deaths, their institutionalization, their references to the narrator’s books/newspaper column being published).  It’s very hypnotic and surreal.  It’s strange yes (made even stranger by the epilogue), but there’s whimsy in it even as the beasts brutally commit suicide or otherwise die. 
 
Common thematic ideas: Beasts are whoever the government decides to disenfranchise; Living must include pain to be worthwhile and Death is inevitable (and even an escape from living); People are beasts; Identity is a narrative, not a static idea.    
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