Book 52 "The Tiger's Wife"

The Tiger's Wife

By

Tea Obreht

A mystery of a grandfather's disappearance and death sets the tone for the moving novel, The Tiger's Wife. As the reader sweeps through the pages it isn't too long before they come to an understanding that two story lines will carry the book.

"Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life—of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again."

As the youngest member of The New Yorker's "20 under 40" group, Obreht caught my attention enough through all they hype in the literary circles that I had to pick up a copy and read it for myself. I had anticipated reading it for a while throughout the Summer, and the hype did not ruin the book. Tea Obreht deserves the literary praise.