Book Report: The Fox Wife

10. Yangsze Choo, The Fox Wife (2024) (5/30/25)

My sister-in-law recommended this book. She listened to it, and said the narration (by the author) is beautiful. Maybe I should have listened to it, because for some reason reading it didn't captivate me. Indeed, one thing that positively irritated me was the author's tendency to repeat things—"key" facts that you'd better not miss! Sometimes mere paragraphs apart. The way I listen to books, my attention tends to fade in and out. Maybe I would have appreciated the repetition, if I managed to listen right past one of those key facts at first mention. I did not appreciate it while reading, though. This story could, I kept thinking, have been a long-form short story, or a novella anyway—so much shorter than 384 pages...

The basic premise is this: it is 1908, Manchuria, the final, turbulent days of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, and a huijing, or fox woman, named Yuki (meaning "Snow") sets off to exact revenge on the man who two years earlier killed her child (human child? fox child? both?). Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we learn the story of Bao, a detective who is investigating the murder of a young woman, possibly linked to foxes, whose path takes him on a collision course with Yuki. The story is complex, with many characters: well-off Chinese patriarchs whose sons are attending university in Japan (and may be involved in revolutionary activities); the old woman, once the head of a Chinese medicine house, who becomes Yuki's employer; photographers; and two beguiling men, Shiro and Kuro ("White" and "Black"), who befriend the sons and who know Yuki from way back. Yet despite the complexity, it seemed plodding, never really picking up steam, the characters flat, the scenes nondescript, too many dreams, not enough reason for the historical setting, too little passion. 

I did like Bao, who had a special gift: when people tell lies, his head starts to buzz. That could be a handy skill in life. 

I flagged one paragraph, involving a conversation between Bao and a young woman who is in love with Shiro, in a greasy-spoon noodle restaurant:

She recovers her composure. What a strange, furtive conversation they've had, almost like old friends meeting up except all she's done is talk about this mysterious Shirakawa [Shiro]. It's like one of those dreams where you meet peculiar people and talk in a dark space, steam rising around them from the giant bamboo steamers filled with dumplings and steamed buns. The emptiness of the restaurant, the sticky floor. The sensation of being displaced from the normal flow of time and circumstances, discussing the secrets of an unknown world that lies parallel to theirs. She hasn't lied, though there are slanted omissions. Especially the last bit, about disappearing people.

I did like that "sensation of being displaced," one that seems to crop up fairly often in this book. But maybe that's to be expected, when humans are foxes—or are they?