Malaysian-Chinese author Yangsze Choo is a New York Times bestselling author, and this book already has many prestigious reviews. It is also now a nominee for the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award. Despite being based clearly on the Eastern mythology of hulijing (fox spirits who seek enlightenment in human form), it felt to me more like a mainstream novel. Choo has a simple, eloquent style, with lovely descriptions of the landscape as metaphor, reminiscent of Chinese poetry. The Fox Wife is a comfortable book, slow-moving and dreamy, full of the magic of the ordinary.

Most of the novel is narrated in first-person by Snow (Xue’er in Chinese, Yuki in Japanese), who takes every opportunity to remind the reader that she is a fox. She never takes the form of a fox, though presumably she can. She was present for events in the distant past, but seems to have no real understanding of history. Foxes are mischievous, she tells us, too curious, and impulsive. To me, she seemed childish despite her age.

Though it means stepping off her path to enlightenment, Snow is on a quest for revenge for the death of her child. She is following the trail of a mysterious photographer, made possible by the rarity of photography in 1908 China. She intends to kill him. She says very little about her child, except to reminisce about the horror of her loss. She never mentions the husband she must have had in order to be the fox’s wife.

Happily, there is also an interwoven story, of an old man, possibly dying, named Bao. His story is told in the more traditional third person, present tense. I found him much more interesting. As a child, he and a long lost childhood friend, had an encounter with foxes, a memory now hazy and relegated to imagination. But he can, very reliably, hear lies, which makes him a good detective. He is an otherwise unremarkable person, quiet and somewhat lonely, but more or less content with his life. He is on the trail of a series of disappearances and deaths, that eventually link to the same photographer.

The journeys of Snow and Bao are joined as much by attitude as by the crossing of their paths. Their search for the photographer is almost incidental. Their magic, real as it is, seems unimportant. It is the people they both meet along the way, and the small kindnesses they give and receive, that are important. Snow’s kindness comes from naivety and Bao’s from an unhurried wisdom, but they are both truly seeking connection, and ultimately find it.