Bestiary

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I know the author's intention to create a chaotic work, but my interest was back and forth nonetheless. Jorge Luis Borges wrote a contemporary bestiary of sorts, the Book of Imaginary Beings, which collects imaginary beasts from bestiaries and fiction. In many ancient civilizations there are references to animals and their meaning within that specific religion or mythology that we know of today. I picked this book up 7 or 8 times and didn’t feel compelled to read more than a couple of pages at a time before abandoning it for something else.

I don’t see footnoting incorporated into fictional narratives quite like it was used here and it was amazing!It was early in the night and the sky was bad-breathed, freckled with stars like white bacteria on a tongue. And more mysterious events follow: holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her estranged grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with red hands and snakes in her belly; her brother tests the possibility of flight. Saliva (口水, kǒushǔi) is literally mouth water in Mandarin, and the mouth, the 口, is repeatedly mentioned in the story as a hole. From the familiar to the improbable, the gross to the endearing, The Modern Bestiary is a compendium of curious creatures. If you're looking for a literary fiction novel that will shock you, then definitely check out Bestiary.

Combine that with the gorgeous writing and it was just a book I didn’t want to put down for one second.

But the content in this book…I can take gore, and scenes of blood, but for whatever reason, this book was really bluntly focused on details of bodily functions and strange metaphors of the same. When I shoved the scab aside with my fingernails, there was a hole beneath, deep as my finger and bloodless as a glove socket. I named every hole-species I knew: wells; wombs; wounds; spots in the wall where my brother stuck his pencil through, thinking the walls would scab on their own, and when they didn’t, he sealed them with his boogers and let them petrify into stone; lakes; seas, which meant most of the world was a hole, which meant I was native to holes, animal burrows, anuses, atlases. Among many strangenesses, there are holes in the back yard that spit out letters from her estranged grandmother.