Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. Following a short review, please feel free to discuss the book in the comments!
The Fox Woman (2000)
Written by: Kij Johnson
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 380 (hardback)
Publisher: Tor
Premise:
Yoshifuji is a man fascinated by foxes, a man discontented and troubled by the meaning of life. A misstep at court forces him to retire to his long-deserted country estate, to rethink his plans and contemplate the next move that might return him to favor and guarantee his family’s prosperity.
Kitsune is a young fox who is fascinated by the large creatures that have suddenly invaded her world. She is drawn to them and to Yoshifuji. She comes to love him and will do anything to become a human woman to be with him.
Shikujo is Yoshifuji’s wife, ashamed of her husband, yet in love with him and uncertain of her role in his world. She is confused by his fascination with the creatures of the wood, and especially the foxes that she knows in her heart are harbingers of danger. She sees him slipping away and is determined to win him back from the wild…for all that she has her own fox-related secret.
Magic binds them all. And in the making (and breaking) of oaths and honors, the patterns of their lives will be changed forever.
Obvious spoiler warning for discussion of a book we all should have read.
Discussion: Where to even begin with this book? I’ve typed and retyped the first sentence so many times. I liked it, I actually liked it a lot, but it’s an interesting one to really even talk about.
To begin, I love reading fairy tales steeped in traditions that aren’t my own. I love a good retelling of Beauty and the Beast as much as the next child who grew up on the Disney classic, but the story always unfolds predictably. I’m not up on my kitsune lore (outside the little bit they got into it with Teen Wolf) and really had no idea, from the beginning of this book, where it was going to go or how it could possibly end.
The poetry insertions, the koans, were lovely. I loved how important understanding poetry became to Kitsune, how important it was to her development as a woman to be able to write her own poem to her husband.
And speaking of Kitsune, I really enjoyed the fact that each of the pov characters felt so distinct, that even without the labels I could have told who was speaking, and how Shikujo’s sections changed over time from this ephemeral “one must speak of oneself in the third person and be mysterious” narrative to the matter of fact, say it like you mean it character we see at the end. Kitsune always felt like a fox, even as she evolved into a woman, she evolved into one who, in so many ways, still related to the world as an animal. She loved, I don’t doubt she loved and felt grief, but her solutions to her problems were very animal in nature, even at the end. She was as nature had made her.
I’m still foggy on exactly how the magic works. It seems like she doesn’t really turn into a person, that she just makes people see her as a person? So Yoshifuji . . . had sex . . . with a fox. (Two foxes!) Right? I mean, is that what I’m given to understand happened? If so, how was she able to maintain the illusion when passed out in the shrine? How did the house stay when she left? I just have some questions that I’m not 100% sure I want answered if the answer involves bestiality.
In conclusion: This left me with some puzzling questions about the nature of the magic, but I loved the story and the characters and the way the whole thing was constructed. I’m interested to see where later installments take the story.