The Tiger's Wife
Ratings24
Average rating3.2
15
Ratings24
Average rating3.2
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Spectacular . . . [Téa Obreht] spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop.”—Entertainment Weekly Look for Téa Obreht’s second novel, Inland, now available. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Kansas City Star • Library Journal Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation. In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Economist • Vogue • Slate • Chicago Tribune • The Seattle Times • Dayton Daily News • Publishers Weekly • Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered “Stunning . . . a richly textured and searing novel.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “[Obreht] has a talent for subtle plotting that eludes most writers twice her age, and her descriptive powers suggest a kind of channeled genius. . . . No novel [this year] has been more satisfying.”—The Wall Street Journal “Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, The Tiger’s Wife is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination.”—The New York Times Book Review “That The Tiger’s Wife never slips entirely into magical realism is part of its magic. . . . Its graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend seems even more absorbing.”—The Washington Post
Reviews with the most likes.
Meh. I take full responsibility for the two-star rating. Perhaps this is a lovely book (I certainly enjoyed some lovely moments in it), but I read it on a series of flights around the country for internship interviews. So the switches from present realism to past parables felt disjointed, and I kept wondering why Obreht wasn't giving us more of the narrator's here-and-now, as opposed to using her as the vehicle for retelling tales. Given the glowing critical acclaim plastered all over the cover, I personally may have just missed the nuance.
I liked this book. It was not how I expected it to be. It was still very enjoyable.
I loved parts of it, and the writing is lovely. But as a whole it didn't keep me engaged. There are at least 3 separate stories here, and they felt too separate, although each has its own appeal.
My Serbia book around the world.
The actual cool stuff about the history and all that got very lost on weird stuff about the tiger which was maybe just too deep for me but I was not into it.
