No stars, because I only made it about 1/3 of the way through and DNF. It doesn't seem appropriate to leave stars when I haven't finished.

Nothing wrong with the book in an objective sense, the writing is gorgeous and the individual sections intriguing, but the narrative is very disjointed. It's a stylistic thing, completely and totally, but in this case the style doesn't suit me.

When Fox is a Thousand is a lyrical, magical novel, rich with poetry and folklore and elements of the fairytale. Larissa Lai interweaves three narrative voices and their attendant cultures: an elusive fox growing toward wisdom and her 1000 birthday, the ninth-century Taoist poet/nun Yu Hsuan-Chi (a real person executed in China for murder), and the oddly named Artemis, a young Asian-American woman living in contemporary Vancouver.

With beautiful and enchanting prose, and a sure narrative hand, Lai combines Chinese mythology, the sexual politics of medieval China, and modern-day Vancouver to masterfully revise the myth of the Fox (a figure who can inhibit women's bodies in order to cause mischief). Her potent imagination and considerable verbal skill result in a tale that continues to haunt long after the story is told.'

(Abstract source: http://www.amazon.com/When-Fox-Thousand-Larissa-Lai/dp/0889740410)

I found the characters fascinating. I am more familiar with Japanese ideas about foxes and fox magic than Chinese, and enjoyed exploring the differences. The trickiness of dealing with foxes is used to excellent effect, in matters of love and hate and friendship, support and betrayal, and I was never sure which way things were going to turn at any given moment. I treasure this kind of plotline, as I prefer the unpredictable, the surprising, to the same old thing. The gender politics involved were also engaging, and kept me guessing as to how it would all turn out. I look forward to reading more work by this author. ( )

Changing shape, culture, country, and almost everything else you can think of, with poetry.