Published in 2024, this is by Malaysian-born Yangsze Choo, author of The Night Tiger.

We're in Manchuria; it's 1908; and we open with the story of a beautiful woman who comes to knock on the door of an innocent scholar: "She has a bewitching smile and a jar of his favourite rice wine." He lets her in (even though he's supposed to be studying for his examinations). And, of course, it's all very fishy: "Why is she alone outside this remote country villa, and why do her eyes gleam strangely in the rain-wet darkness?" He passes an enjoyable evening in her company. But there are two peculiarities: Later, he can't really recall any of it in any detail; and yet he's desperate to see her again. She tells him where to find her, and the next night he sets off. He's so obsessed that he doesn't notice anything odd about the area she sends him to: "There are many curious houses along the way, all with darkened windows like empty sockets." But the house she has indicated is an imposing mansion.

Well, as you might guess, he becomes obsessed, neglects everything else except her, and starts to fall ill. Eventually, his loyal servant summons a monk to do some exorcising: "A raiding party is made up of local peasants who swear there are no houses or grand estates on that crooked little hill. Only a long-abandoned graveyard. The fourth grave from the top is constructed, as Chinese graves are, like a little house half sunk into the hill. Using hoes and spades, they break into it to discover that it has become a fox's den."



Now, apart from the inherent creepiness of this tale, there are three interesting things about it:

First, it introduces us to the idea of fox spirits, stories of which, Choo tells us, abound in northern China, Japan, and Korea. Essentially, they're shape-shifters, foxes who are able to appear in human form. They are both exorcised and worshipped, feared and admired. Their liminal status means they're associated with madness. And they're both powerful and vulnerable: "Foxes are said to beguile people. Charming tricksters, they will carry off your gold wine cups as well as your heart. The worst ones devour your vitality. Yet they seem oddly vulnerable. Easily killed or maimed, they lose paws, tails, and their own lives in gruesome ways."

Second, I'd heard this story before... Here's my diary entry from April 2010, when we went to the Victoria Theatre in Singapore to see a new Chinese opera called The Painted Skin: "It was a cautionary tale. A scholar is deceived by a demon who appears in the form of a beautiful woman. The scholar, having invited her to his (detached) study, is then caught in a web of intrigue and lies. Eventually, he arrives home from market to see the demon in his true guise. The formerly spurned priest saves the day, but the scholar's marriage is a train-wreck." No foxes here, but it's clearly the same story, and it derives from Pu Songling's Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio, written over many decades from the late 1600s to the early 1700s. The story has been adapted as a Cantonese opera more than once, so I'm not sure which production we saw. (This one mentions a fox spirit as the seductress; this one doesn't.)


Chinese opera in Singapore on a different occasion

Third, that story about the scholar -- the one that opens The Fox Wife -- is recounted to us by Snow, herself a shape-shifting fox-woman: "I exist as either a small canid with thick fur, pointed ears, and neat black feet, or a young woman. Neither are safe forms in a world run by men..."

Snow is one of two narrators. Her first-person account tells us that she is grieving for her dead daughter, and hunting for the man who killed her, a quest that sends her across northern China, and ultimately to Japan. She's a wonderful character. Witty, self-aware, feisty, and absolutely not cute, she's essentially a lonely figure. She makes an excellent narrator, and we're very much on her side.


"Moji is a picturesque, tidily bustling port. 'Modern', meaning European, with an imposing redbrick customhouse..."

Interleaving with Snow's story, chapter by chapter, is the third-person account of Bao, a 60-something widower, now working as a detective, and also trying to track down a murderer. Bao, too, is a highly sympathetic figure. He has been messed with by foxes, it turns out, but it's also foxes who straighten him out again.

Bit by bit, the stories of Snow and Bao converge, and it emerges that they're more entangled than they realize. So it's an action-packed storyline, full of twists and turns.

The whole business of the fox-spirits is absolutely fascinating, and sustains our interest throughout. They're chaos-sowing. They're charismatic. They're elusive. We meet three of them, and they vary in their concepts of morality. At one point, we're told: "The famous scholar Ji Yun... said: 'Humans and things are different species, and foxes lie between humans and things; darkness and light take different paths, and foxes lie in between darkness and light.'" They can do you great harm, or great good. Then again, that applies to the humans we meet...


Snow had her share of train travel

This is another book where I don't want to spoil the "what happens" energy (there's a good summary here, if you need one). But it's a rollicking plot. Not only do we have murders to solve, but we meet young revolutionaries out to overthrow the Imperial Qing government, take ship for Mojiko, and witness the reunion of two friends who were separated as children. In the process, we enjoy plenty of atmospheric period detail.

The bottom line is that I really enjoyed this novel. It's worth quoting this blogger: "As I have gone through the process of reviewing this book, I have begun to appreciate the absolute chaos of the story. And this is, of course, entirely intentional, because if two foxes are a crowd, three is a recipe for disaster. In the hands of a lesser writer this might have been messy, cluttered, and purposelessly dysfunctional, but Choo handles the mayhem with enviable control. The book is slow and it is dense, but it is never hard to follow, and the writing is so lovely and at times so sharply funny that I could sink into the words alone and never give a thought to the story."

Totally.