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| (photo: James Cham) | |
Yangsze Choo's previous novels are The Ghost Bride and The Night Tiger, a Reese's Book Club selection. Like those bestsellers, her third novel, The Fox Wife (to be published by Holt on February 13, 2024), is the story of a mother seeking vengeance that brings Chinese folklore to life in magical ways.
Where did your fascination with foxes come from?
Growing up, I read a lot of traditional stories about foxes. In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean folklore, the fox is a shapeshifter that assumes the form of a seductive woman or man. In most Asian stories about foxes, a beautiful woman comes knocking on the door of a scholar and tempts him with a night of passion. Of course, there's a price to be paid for this, and that is the realization that he has been tricked by a creature.
These "histories" tend to be told from a patriarchal point of view, and contain both the desire to be seduced as well as the inbuilt censure of "good women don't go roaming around at night." Thus, such a woman, no matter how attractive she is, must be either a fox or a ghost. The other interesting thing is that in these tales, the non-human is "tamed" by being taken either as a wife or a concubine by the scholar.
I've always been intrigued by the idea of a beast that masquerades as a person. It raises lots of questions about what makes someone human--as well as the darker impulses that lurk within all of us. Yet we also ascribe innocence and authenticity to animals as well. This tension between the human and the other lies at the heart of The Fox Wife.
In the U.K., foxes have moved into suburban and urban areas and are sometimes considered nuisances. Did you have such modern stereotypes in mind when exploring legends about their mischievousness?
Foxes are captivating creatures, though as you mentioned, they're also regarded as pests by humans. From Asia to Europe, the fox in folk tales is always described as clever and resourceful, which suggests it must be a universal trait. They also seem to be quite purposeful in their actions. When I was writing the characters in this novel, I tried to keep that unpredictable beast nature in mind. Snow, for example, doesn't quite think like a human, and neither do the male foxes. They're bold, yet frivolous and easily distracted. You can view their actions as either callous or straightforwardly pure.
In all three of your novels, Malaysian and Chinese folklore plays a major role. How did you develop a knowledge and love of these stories? You mention your mother's proficiency in Chinese literature in the acknowledgments, for instance.
I've always loved folktales, and borrowed loads of anthologies from the library when I was young, as well as listening in when my grandparents and their friends told ghost stories. I also studied Chinese in high school and university, but the most useful course I took was literary Chinese. Chinese is difficult to learn because there's so much memorization. I can't think of any other language where people routinely forget how to write Chinese written characters, or say things like "Oh, what's this word again?" Literary Chinese is different from spoken Chinese in that it uses an elegant, abbreviated form with older words.
When I was writing this novel, I thought that a creature like a fox that can live for hundreds of years and fool a scholar must surely be well read. So I put in quite a few quotes from classical scholars, as well as snippets of poems and history. I also really appreciated my mother's degree in Chinese literature, because I could call her up at odd hours with lots of questions. Names are especially important for Chinese, since each name is composed by choosing certain words or characters. For all three of my novels, whenever I've named a character, I've run the names by my mum to make sure they made sense.
Bao is almost a stand-in for the reader, discovering the power of foxes as he investigates disappearances. Did you set out to write a detective novel? What made Bao the right character to guide us through?
I write my novels without an outline (an unfortunate habit) so as the story unfolds, it's also a surprise to me. I had a vague idea that there might be some murders involved, but I wasn't planning on having a detective until I started writing chapter two and suddenly, Bao appeared. I could almost see what he looked like, as he was walking around, poking into other people's business. He felt very real to me--his personality and history flowed quickly, and I think having his point of view helps move the story along swiftly, because you can jump to different events, which is a bit harder when you have only one narrative arc. He's a good foil for Snow, a mysterious woman he suspects of being a shape-shifting fox. She's playfully disruptive, while he possesses a certain doggedness.
Between them, the two protagonists are very concerned with truth and justice. How have you complicated the notions of good and evil here?
Traditionally, foxes in Asia exist in a gray area between darkness and light. Once worshiped as emissaries of the harvest gods, the fox is also reviled as a demon said to suck the qi, or life force, out of humans. This dichotomy has always struck me as intriguing, and when I was researching this, I read many purported historical encounters with them, which often report puzzling and contradictory behavior.
Foxes, it seems, are as varied as humans and come in all shades of morality. When I began writing this novel, the voice of [Snow] simply took over and had lots of opinions on everything from appraising antique wine cups to burning down people's houses. She also tries very hard to be good, which raises the question of what is "good" to a non-human creature? The more we delve into the world of the foxes, and how they feel about being persecuted and exorcized by humans, the more complicated matters become.
Are you at work on another book?
I'm working on my fourth novel now, about children who might be changelings. Like The Fox Wife, it's set in Northern China, near the Korean border. This past summer, I traveled to South Korea to research ginseng plants. It was particularly interesting to observe the mountains, as well as the trees and the local vegetation.
Do you have any writing rituals that you rely on?
A nice hot mug of tea, with condensed milk! I feel like I can't start my day properly without it, and in between I must confess that I also eat a lot of dark chocolate to "inspire" me. I don't have any particular writing setup: my desk is actually a coffee table. I lived in Japan during my childhood, so I got used to sitting on the floor, and it's really helpful to be able to roll around when one is stumped by a plot twist! --Rebecca Foster