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[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “A Historic Thriller Steeped in the Mythical Mists of Time: Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife” by Kevin McGeary

Yangsze Choo, The Fox Wife, Henry Holt and Company, 2024. 400 pgs.

One of the biggest challenges a novelist has is that of worldbuilding. In the world of a novel, there can be talking cows, but the logic must be consistent. If cows talk, do humans still eat beef? Do some religions still consider them sacred?

Worldbuilding is difficult when a novel is set in a real-life location, because readers who are familiar with the place will take issue with inaccuracies. In a historical novel, the worldbuilding must have accurate period details and avoid anachronisms.

The premise of The Fox Wife provides author Yangsze Choo with a three-pronged worldbuilding challenge, in that it is set in a historical time and place, and also involves fantasy. It takes place in the dying years of China’s Qing dynasty (1644–1911), shortly before the country became a republic. Period details, including a sense of civilisational decline, and geographical details—for example, the threat of dying in the Manchurian cold—are ever-present.

In 1908, a young woman, alleged to be a courtesan, is found dead in the snow. Bao, a detective who has a fascination with fox-related mythology, is called on to investigate the death. Chapters alternate in viewpoint between Bao and Snow, who is a fox spirit in a human female body.

The slow, deliberative plot sees Bao start pursuing Snow to find out more. Snow’s story is driven by the desire to avenge her daughter’s killing. One of the novel’s strongest features is her characterisation. She is driven by grief for her daughter and desire for revenge on the man responsible, a Manchurian photographer named Bektu Nikan. Her grief is described as follows:

Grass had grown on my child’s grave in the far north. I’d lain on top of it every night for months, in vain hopes of keeping her warm. It was so cold, and she so small, lost to me forever. Burying my face in the dry clods of earth, I thought I’d die of grief and fury. But unlike the dead, living creatures recover.

The odds are against her, as a “frail” woman, starting her search in the “large unfamiliar city” of Dalian. In an interview with NPR, author Yangsze Choo explained that apex predators like lions and tigers don’t have to be all that wily, but as nature’s underdogs, foxes do. Snow’s fallibility is always apparent. Upon finally getting an opportunity to harm Bektu Nikan, she hesitates: “His face was lax and empty as a child’s.”

The novel skilfully straddles the very real world of a declining Manchuria, and an eventful boat journey to Japan, all while containing a supernatural dimension. Snow observes:

Ghosts and foxes, though often confused by people, are quite different. For one thing, ghosts belong to the world of the dead and are therefore yin, or negative energy. Some people think foxes are similar because we go around collecting qi, or life force, but nothing could be further from the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better-looking.

Near the beginning it is stated that “China is being devoured, like a roast pig”, and Snow’s otherworldly wisdom helps emphasise this. Later on, she notices: “Humans don’t realise an uprising is coming until the watchtowers burn down.”

Bao’s chapters are narrated in the third person. Bao is an unusually insightful person because of a childhood experience. Throughout his meandering quest to uncover the truth, the novel deftly mixes the very real phenomenon of dead courtesans and the decidedly unearthly world of fox spirits.  

By mixing myth and history, The Fox Bride has a strong sense of the mists of time. It also has an absorbing plot, albeit one that is as unhurried as the doomed society that it depicts. 

^{How to cite: McGeary, Kevin. “A Historic Thriller Steeped in the Mythical Mists of Time: Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 17 Apr. 2024, chajournal.com/2024/04/17/fox-wife.}

Kevin McGeary is a translator, Mandarin tutor and author. His short story collection The Naked Wedding was published in 2021. He is also a singer-songwriter who has written two albums of Chinese-language songs. [All contributions by Kevin McGeary.]