asianamlitfans | A Review of Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife (Henry Holt, 2024)

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn

Edited by Lizzy Sobiesk

I remember really enjoying Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride awhile back, so I chose The Fox Wife (Henry Holt, 2024) as one of my plane flight reads! Admittedly, I have missed her previous novel, The Night Tiger, just because, well, if you read Asian American literature, you know the problem. You can’t keep up anymore. I think there was a time where you sort of could; in the early aughts, when I began my studies in the field, I do think there was a way in which you could generally keep up. I definitely do not think this is the case anymore, especially as the Children of 1965—Min Song’s brilliant book being referenced here—have all come of age! So, let us move toward the marketing description: “Manchuria, 1908. In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman’s identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they’ve remained tantalizingly out of reach—until, perhaps, now. Meanwhile, a family who owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments but can’t escape the curse that afflicts them—their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. When a disruptively winsome servant named Snow enters their household, the family’s luck seems to change—or does it? Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all she’s a mother seeking vengeance for her lost child. Hunting a murderer, she will follow the trail from northern China to Japan, while Bao follows doggedly behind. Navigating the myths and misconceptions of fox spirits, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur.”

As fate would have it, the person next to me on the plane had read the novel, and she had read it in a book club. She told me it was one of their favorites. Honestly, I thought: “Great! I will have this book read in no time.” Unfortunately, this pacing did not occur. Part of the issue is that I think I’ve been reading too much high fantasy, where fast-moving plots are sort of the norm. This novel is a slow burn a la something like The Age of Innocence. Eventually Newland and Countess Olenska will not get together, but it will take us a long time to find that out. In this novel, Bao, the detective, and Snow, the fox figure, exist in two separate plots for about 2/3 of the novel. Readers make connections between the two prior to the point where they actually do meet, knowing that Choo is telegraphing some of the later-stage reveals. Despite the fact that we are ready for them, the payoff is quite high, precisely because this novel is about the fox’s ability to withhold and to keep grudges, on the one hand, and how long it can take for a romance to have the opportunity to finally blossom. The last 50 pages of this novel are absolutely brilliant, and I understood what the woman next to me on the plane was raving about. This novel rewards patience and rewards it incredibly handsomely: Snow and Bao accrue additional textures that make us understand their various motivations and their already complicated backgrounds. The conclusion in particular resonated with me, and I fell asleep basking in the afterglow of its quiet yet rich nuances. Choo’s novel also adds to the “fox” boom that I’ve seen in the last five or so years. For other fox titles, check out: Sophie Kim’s The God and the Gumiho, Kat Cho’s Wicked Fox, and Robin Ha’s Fox Maidens. For slightly older titles, you can find fox lineages in Alexander Chee’s brilliant Edinburgh.

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