M2C Online BookClub – The Tiger’s Wife (Part 1)

Fingers crossed some of ye have managed to get your claws into a copy of our June bookclub book – The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht. I’ll try not to include any spoilers for anyone that’s playing catch up this week.

 

I started reading it last week, raced through the first three chapters and am enjoying it immensely. I loved the opening of the book with the memory of the narrator and her grandfather’s trips to the zoo and the tantalising first mention of the tiger’s wife:

‘’I once knew a girl who loved tigers so much she almost became one herself’’

It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the novel begins with the death of Natalia’s grandfather - the exact circumstance’s of which are murky. The customs and superstitions around death that give her grandmother comfort are interesting and the hints of conflict between various family members are intriguing.

Natalia and her friend Zόra are medical students on their way to help vaccinate orphans in an orphanage across the border. I like the way that explanations about the character and place come organically through the text – it has the effect of actually making me slow down my reading to make sure I don’t miss anything. I get the sense that everything is significant. Time periods shift and change throughout - there are mentions of a war, the Administration shutting things down and a teenage Natalia’s boyfriend is drafted. Back in the present, as she and Zόra cross the border with a carload of medicine it’s obvious that tension is still high – in the orchard of their host family in Brejevina shadowy figures dig on a sinister errand. The sense of trepidation is skilfully wrought; the reader gets the sense that they are being shown pieces of puzzle.

On a mysterious night time excursion with her grandfather Natalia, he tells her the story of his meeting with the deathless man, a wartime experience of his, which was one of my favourite passages of the book so far.

Still no mention of the tiger’s wife but I’m happy to continue reading and try not to skip ahead.

If you’re enjoying the book so far you may also like to read:

‘Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police’ by Carmen Bugan. A memoir about growing up in Ceausescu’s Romania, describing the author’s village childhood and her warm relationship with her grandparents before her father’s dissident activities brings the whole family under the scrutiny of the secret police.

‘The Fall of Yugoslavia’ by Misha Glenny. An acclaimed account of the five-year war in the former Yugoslavia.

M2C Bookclub- Competition Time