Review: "The Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht

I am blessed to have been alive in 2011 to see the debut novels of two very talented young women in Tea Obreht and Karen Russell. Each (both were featured in the 20 Under 40 book, which all but two of the new authors I read for the rest of the year will have been featured in that book) carves out their place in the landscape of new fiction with passionate zeal and ferocious originality. Seriously, these ladies do not mess around, and I feel sorry for those who won’t recognize them when they sneak up behind them in a few years with new books and become literary superstars. They demand and deserve recognition. Now Obreht, the youngest author in the 20 Under 40 collection at only 25, brings to us a novel that is steeped in mythology and the magic that stories, no matter how outlandish they may be, bring us that makes us better people and more aware of our beautiful blue planet. The Tiger’s Wife starts out in an unnamed Balkan province trying to rebuild itself after years of war. Natalia, a young doctor, is on a mercy mission to an orphanage by the sea. On her way there, she hears of her grandfather dying under mysterious circumstances, which leads her to recount all of the fantastical stories that her grandfather used to tell her. As her stay in this strange village gets weirder, with a family digging for bodies of long dead relatives and the town hiding something from her, the stories she is remembering offer insights into her situation and a better understanding of her grandfathers odd ways. For someone who is only a few years older than I am, Obreht writes like an old pro, by weaving a web of mystery around these mystical stories that get weirder and weirder, but also become more entertaining as we near the end. Natalia recalls the story of the deathless man her grandfather keeps meeting in different places suffering from strife and death. Easily the highlight of these recollections, they are poignant in how they highlight our fears of death and what attitude we inhabit as we face its inevitability, and also just plain creepy, because we do not really know what to think of this man who can survive drowning and headshots, and who offers a weird, accurate way to predict your death. We later learn that he may be the nephew of death who has to live forever as punishment for an indiscretion, but I can’t help but be creeped out by him and his presence in the novel, which reminded me of William Sadler as Death in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. The other main story involves a tiger loose in the grandfather childhood village and those who try to hunt it. This is where the novel gets its title from, and where a lot of the mystery of what shaped Natalia’s grandfather’s life is answered. Simply put, The Tiger’s wife marks the arrival of a great new talent, who we will be talking about in years to come.

Rating: 5/5