When Fox Is a Thousand

Caroline Sin is a Ph.D. candidate in English at McMaster University in
Hamilton.

Larissa Lai’s first novel—an intriguing mix of myth, history, and
postmodern angst—

interweaves stories of a ninth-century Chinese poetess, a fox who lives
to be a thousand, and a

group of contemporary 20-something Chinese-Canadian women struggling, in
their own often inadequate ways, to come to terms with themselves and
each other.

The narrative is an absorbing one, and the characters are complex and
unusual. Lai avoids indulging in popular stereotypes of Asian women as
repressed, silent, subservient, and tragic, opting instead for more
modern characters who, like their similarly disaffected white
counterparts, study obscure languages, have names like “Artemis,”
and experiment sexually with members of both sexes, freely and
frequently. These women are not of the toiling and silenced immigrant
class most often portrayed in contemporary literature about Asian North
Americans; rather, they are the daughters of those immigrants. The women
of this new generation, as Lai depicts them, have voice and power, but
they do not always know what to say or how to act.

Lai’s honest portrayal of Asian-Canadian women is refreshing,
although at times her characters run the risk of becoming stereotypes
themselves—a watered-down mixture of post-feminist Generation X.
Nevertheless, there are some memorable characters in the novel, and its
three stories, which are skilfully integrated to sustain the reader’s
interest, come together at the end of the novel in a way that is both
disturbing and inventive.