Kwa tells enchanting tale

It’s a safe bet to suppose that a hefty majority of Lydia Kwa’s readers will possess zeroto-little knowledge about pre-modern Chinese literary history. Thankfully, the Vancouver-based writer has anticipated exactly that.

In the final few pages of Oracle Bone, her fourth novel, she contextualizes her story of warrior nuns, magical forests, infant homicide, palace intrigue, herbal potions, and roving bandits as a latter-day version of chuanqui (“transmitting the strange”), tales of marvels that emerged during the midpoint of the Tang Dynasty in the early 7th century.

The story is relayed by the Unknown Wayfarer, who happens upon a storyteller at the end of an alley on a humid summer evening in the noisy city of Xi’an. The alleyway’s cackling spinner of tales, who calls herself the Imperfect One, addresses the gathering crowd with a disclaimer: “This is a fable, and hence, spiced with all kinds of outrageous lies.”

That first night (of 21 in total) the Imperfect One begins her officially unsanctioned story with the plight of Ling, an orphaned farm girl who is sexually assaulted and put up for auction by a robber-bandit. The tale-telling grows far less gruesome after that. Ling is bought by Qilan, a mysterious Daoist nun who can cast powerful spells.

Kwa manages the pieces of the Imperfect One’s marvellous tale with aplomb, tying Qilan’s selective training of Ling to Ling’s development as a morally-centred young woman while building toward the inevitable confrontation between good and evil.

If marvellousness isn’t exactly intellectually taxing or notably profound, it is rousing, fun, and, well, enchanting. As it should be.