The Tiger's Wife: A Novel

Despite the fact that this book did everything "wrong" in terms of what normally annoys me, it didn't annoy me. To quote a man whose name shall be unrevealed since I am ashamed to admit I know quotes of his: "If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right."*Let me explain.Obreht uses lengthy character descriptions. Lengthy as in chapter-long ones. Chapters that derail completely, utterly, shamelessly from the main story. So much, in fact, that it is difficult to remember what the main story is. It is difficult to know if the main story is the main story. Much alike a reader taking time in a limited book review of a very brilliant book to talk about something else entirely, like 80s pop music.And yet, I find that I am not derailed. I find that each story weaved into the others - even the really obscure ones - make sense. They intrigue me. And instead of putting the book down in anger when I reach a crossroads and find myself transported 50 years back in time; when I'm not sure if the ambiguous term "the war" means the first or second world war, the war in Yugoslavia, or other wars still; or when I have no idea why the narrator in the important grandfather sequences sometimes is the main character Natalia, and sometimes the (dead) grandfather (in flashbacks) - instead of putting the book down I kept reading, eager to learn what would happen in this new (or continued) strand of the story.Finally, I should have been annoyed with Obreht's extensive use of magical realism, drawing heavily on local lore in the Balkans. (If anyone is curious just how annoyed I normally would be at magical realism, it is possible to find out here: [...]Anyway. No. It didn't annoy me. And not just because the good sides of the novel outweighed the bad. Because there were plenty of good sides too. Such as excellent writing. Beautiful language. An emotional backdrop (I'm a sucker for war, in books). Interesting characters. Lots of history, neatly tucked in without feeling forced.In the end, the reason the good sides didn't outweigh the bad ones was that the things I'd normally put onto the "bad" side of the scale weren't bad. Obreht managed to handle several complex and advised-against tools and techniques in such a fashion that I didn't hate it. I didn't even dislike it. I think I actually might approve.(*For the record, I'm not really ashamed now that a quick Google-search revealed that this song is an old classic, made famous by Luther Ingram. I'll just refrain from telling you that the version I'm familiar with is Rod Stewart's. Oops.**)((** Oh, who am I kidding? Rod Stewart, I <3 you! ))(((And no, this novel has absolutely nothing to do with that song.)))

In The Tiger's Wife: A Novel by Tea Obreht, you'll read many folk-stories set in an unnamed Balkan country. The main story that the folk stories surround, like a band of coyotes after a stay dog, takes place in the last fifty years in what was once Yugoslavia. The primary narrator is a woman Doctor in her twenties, trying to discover exactly how her beloved Grandfather died. In the process, she learns about the stories and myths of his life. Sometimes the language in the novel is beautiful, sometimes it is inventive and unexpected, sometimes it seems purposely jarring and strange, so that the words and phrases fling you into some woody Balkan village far off the modern grid. You feel the distance from the modern in the folk stories which seem to pile up upon each other, like Turkish carpets stacked, one more beautiful than the next. Not that there is anything wrong with the stories, but like the carpets unfolded during a sales pitch, do they all contribute to a coherent plot? I'm not convinced they do. Nor am I fascinated by any of the characters in this book. Yet, the book is more than the sum of plot and characters.I travelled through Yugoslavia in the 1970s before the death of Tito and the subsequent unraveling of the State, when the country was an incredibly poor and backward eastern European nation. Like most Americans, I could never understand what the apparently sudden ethnic wars and need for separation in the 1980s was about. Tea Obreht, in telling her characters' stories reveals some of the dynamics that can cause isolated, illiterate peoples to turn on a perceived `other' with terrible consequences, especially when times are tough, and especially when politicians play with cultural differences for their own greedy power. It makes me shutter to see how easily that happens in the novel and in life.That is why The Tiger's Wife reminds me of a campfire where scary stories are told, resulting in unsettling dreams and fear of the sounds just out of sight. How easily a culture can split into uncompromising factions--as we find our county doing right this minute. That is the message I take away from this intriguing novel.

Comments on ‘The Tiger’s Wife’ by Téa Obreht(Dorothea Shefer-Vanson)Not being a great fan of fantastical literature, I found this particular book somewhat rough going.It is a sort of Balkan Arabian Nights, mixing the reality of the wars that affected the region in the late twentieth century with the folklore and fantasy world that may be part of the local culture and possibly also the product of the author’s imagination. There is a fair sprinkling of medical terms and procedures, which are presumably part of the author’s personal experience or the result of extensive research (or a well-informed source).Admittedly, the writing is well done, with plenty of rich metaphors, similes, and other rhetorical devices. The human characters are less well-defined, and the various Balkan names don’t help the reader to distinguish between them. The animal characters do seem to be more clearly defined, but that’s possibly because they have innate features that are universally recognizable.As we learn from the interview with the author at the end of the ebook, the death of her own grandfather played a significant role in the creation of the grandfather character in the book – perhaps the only well-rounded character, apart from the author herself.The idea behind the book seems unsatisfying to me. Nothing is brought to a satisfactory conclusion. I couldn’t understand what the point of the story is, other than to condemn war, the primitive thinking and way of life that prevails (or perhaps once prevailed) in remote Balkan villages, and the contrasting nobility of animals.Rudyard Kipling did it better. And the constant preoccupation with his ‘Jungle Book,’ only serves to emphasize this.

Amazing novel, the language is a piece of art. History, imagination and fantasy mingle in a unique way. Loved it.

Interessant zu lesen, nicht was ich erwartet hatte.

Good!

What an unusual book. I love the interconnected stories and fables. The writing is wonderful, descriptions were memorable. This book is great for discussion in literature class or book clubs. I will treasure this book and recommend it to anyone who wants to read a great book.

Bello, avvincente, interessante e ben scritto.Una storia balcanica del presente e del passato.Onirico e al contempo molto reale in una miscela ben combinata.