“No, can’t go in there. Too close. Start somewhere else.”
“If they killed her now, she would leak river instead of blood.”
“The way Nǎinai said Mother’s name shifted alongside her memory.”
Alice Evelyn Yang’s debut novel, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing (William Morrow 2026) is going to hold space in my head for a long while. This magical realism, folklore laden, historical jaunt through generational trauma has teeth, and sharp ones; it doesn’t slink, it roars. What an unexpected delight this novel was. It is not a fun novel in subject matter, but how Yang presents the family saga, weaving in folklore and blood-soaked history that includes both the Red Guard and the Japanese Occupation, is a reader’s delight. At least this reader. I’ve always found good storytelling akin to magic. And this is magic.
Centered around Qianze and her father, who shows up eleven years after leaving her and her mother on her fourteenth birthday, the novel presents a generational curse, a prophecy that has kissed three generations that neither opium nor alcohol has been able to kill, and a demon. Often barely lucid, Weihong, tells his daughter a history as he tries to remember the prophecy. The novel jumps around a timeline that covers nearly eighty years, shifting animals biting at each turn, while threads of love and hope (albeit often very frayed threads) hold it together.
Like any good magic, this shouldn’t be spoiled. I hope to see this novel on many a longlist this awards season.
A Girl Named Tommi 