Tea Obreht's "The Tiger's Wife"

Read: February 8, 2012

I absolutely loved this atmospheric book. It's a difficult one to summarize, however, so let's just say it's about: storytelling, history, family, memory, mythology, and more.

Natalia is a doctor from a fictitious Balkan country who, on hearing of her grandfather's death, crosses the border to discover more. As she goes, she ponders all of the stories she grew up hearing from her grandfather, many of them tinted with mystery and magic, and none of them decidedly fiction. Scattered throughout the novel are references to the wartorn country, which sounds similar to Obreht's home country Croatia, meditations on what prolonged warfare can do to the psyche, and small potential for a bit of relief in stories and myths.

There is the story of the deaf-mute girl, married to an abusive blacksmith, who befriends a tiger that has escaped from the zoo. This unusual relationship upsets the locals and their superstitions. Natalia's grandfather, then a young boy, attempts to help the girl partly out of a sense of rightness and partly out of a fascination with the tiger.

Perhaps more integral to the overarching plotline is the story of the deathless man, a peripatetic and ageless man whom Natalia's grandfather meets several times throughout his life. As Natalia recounts her grandfather's tales about the deathless man, she begins to question whether her grandfather actually believed the stories she had always thought of as pure myth. In her grief, Natalia begins to wonder if she too could believe in the deathless man, and if so, if he has the answers she wants about how her grandfather died.

Obreht seamlessly weaves past and present, narrative and dialogue, so that you're never quite sure if she's telling you a fact or a myth, and, in the end, the either/or fades into insignificance as you're swept away by the language and imagery.