APRIL's ARTFUL READERS REVIEW
April 26, 2013
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It's the last Friday of the month...time for the big reveal at the Artful Reader's Club, part of the ART and SOLE blog! My choice for this month...THE TIGER'S WIFE! It's young Tea Obrecht's breakout novel and has won numerous awards.
THE TIGER'S WIFE follows Natalia, a young doctor who lives in an unnamed country that's a ringer for the author's native Croatia. She learns that her beloved grandfather (who was also a doctor,) has died while she's across the border on a mission to deliver vaccine to an orphanage. (This is a story in itself!!) Natalia combines her work with her search for answers about her grandfather's mysterious death. The narrative spans her present actions as well as many poignant memories of her grandfather... for example, how he'd regularly take her to the zoo and read to her from his treasured copy of Rudyard Kipling's JUNGLE BOOK. The author combines these stories with additional stories of him and the village of his birth where, following German bombardment in 1941, a tiger escaped from the zoo and was befriended by a mysterious deaf-mute woman. The evolving story of the tiger's wife, as the deaf-mute becomes known, forms one of two strands that sustain the novel... the second being her grandfather's stories about one Gavran Galle, a deathless man, who appears several times throughout his life.
Tea Obreht is, in many ways, a marvelous writer. Her words are magical and beautifully constructed as she easily combines realism with fantasy and successfully intertwines them almost inseparably. But, in the end, I'm interested in the people and the whys behind what they do. Though the folktales were wonderful, without the character of the grandfather they were meaningless to me. We never really do discover why he died where he did. Further, why did he have such a passion for tigers and why did he hold so tightly to his old, battered copy of the JUNGLE BOOK? Was it just to maintain some connection to his childhood?
When Tea Obrecht wrote this book, she was under the age of 25... what an extraordinary introductory novel!!! That said, I struggled through much of the first half of the novel because of its complexity and unorthodox flow of the chapters...confusing. But, THE TIGER'S WIFE is filled with beautiful writing and imagery...it IS art...but THIS reader could have done with a little less art and more humanity. I would recommend it for the pure artistry of the author's words and the engaging folktales...not for the fulfillment of the initial story's promise.
Thanks for stopping by...perhaps this book is for YOU!! It certainly incited my imagination and my awe of the author's imagery!! Please check in again in a few days when my regular art blog is back!
Big Hugs,
abbyj
