Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Tiger, Tiger

3.11 of 5 stars 3.11 · rating details · 47 ratings · 15 reviews

Lucy has always had a volatile marriage, one marked with frequent splits and reconciliations. So when she takes her two young children, May and Eden, and walks out on her husband, no one expects it will be for good. Until she flees England for America.

In the serene, sunbathed California landscape, Lucy, May, and Eden begin to believe that this new country might offer them...more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published July 22nd 2008 by Grove Press, Black Cat (first published December 1st 2007)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

27 Must Have Queer Summer Reads

7th out of 27 books — 2 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 173)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jun 16, 2013 Lora rated it 3 of 5 stars

May is about 14-years old and lives in England with her father Simon, mother Lucy, and little brother Eden. I can tell it’s a period piece but I honestly could never decide if it was set in the 60s, 70s or 80s. The family owns and operates an antiques store. Simon and Lucy fight a lot, and seem to be constantly putting physical distance in between themselves, as in one of them runs away for a while, then comes back and everything’s fine. Lucy, left by her mother at an early age, doesn’t seem to...more May is about 14-years old and lives in England with her father Simon, mother Lucy, and little brother Eden. I can tell it’s a period piece but I honestly could never decide if it was set in the 60s, 70s or 80s. The family owns and operates an antiques store. Simon and Lucy fight a lot, and seem to be constantly putting physical distance in between themselves, as in one of them runs away for a while, then comes back and everything’s fine. Lucy, left by her mother at an early age, doesn’t seem to want to repeat her mother’s actions, but that doesn’t extend to her wanting to stick around and be stable. Rather, she chooses to drag her kids along with her when she goes off on her flighty adventures. The “adventure” that takes up the bulk of the novel involves Lucy, May and Eden traveling to California to meet Lucy’s friend Renee and stay with her at the compound (“ashram,” as it’s called) of a popular guru named Parvati. They all make friends there, and before May can even blink, they’ve wiled away the summer and are suddenly committed to living on the ashram full-time. May has a wary disbelief of Parvati’s powers, and though she also misses her father and English food and her school, she finds herself becoming complacent on the ashram, mostly because she’s finally found a female friend in Sati, daughter of Parvati’s most generous benefactor. [Here’s where things get spoiler-y] Sati is definitelyprobably gay, and kind of uses her popularity and May’s lack of friends to coerce her into a sexual relationship (although May seems to enjoy it, I think she mostly enjoys Sati’s friendship and their closeness, and feeling special to someone for once in her life). Spoiler alert, Sati kind of ends up being a shitty person, so if you’re looking for a positive gay storyline, you won’t find it here. Also, if you’re triggered by sexual assault, you probably will not like this book, as there’s a pretty harrowing scene towards the end where May is accosted by a strange male.

The language is very nice, and it does a great job with firmly grounding the story in a certain place (although, as I said, I was a little murkier on what time period it was). The sense of place was important, because a lot of the conflict is internal and involves how May feels about her situation (although things really heat up at the ashram, plot-wise, but that doesn’t last as long as I thought it would). Ultimately, this is really just a trifle of a book, and it feels truncated almost as some would say it ends abruptly. But I think that it’s just a testament to the repetitive nature, the constance of the anxiety you feel, when you live with parents who are this selfish, who worry more about their petty disagreements and how they can get revenge on one another, and how they can continue to live out their youthful lifestyle, than they do about their kids. They haven’t grown past the “smoke weed, stay out all night, travel wherever you want” lifestyle, and yet they have children, so they stand, one foot in their 20s and another in their domestic adulthood, while the children struggle to keep their balance somewhere in between. I thought that the emotional state that May was in was very truthful, and I related to it a lot. My parents fought A TON, and they both were extremely moody, with each other and with me and my sister. There wasn’t ever a guarantee that a family outing wouldn’t turn into some public argument or confrontation between my parents, and like May, I always felt a little responsible, a little like I should do something to calm them down and insert myself in the middle of it, a little like I should keep my little sister away from the arguing, and a lot like I was just plain embarrassed and wished I could have a peaceful family like a lot of my friends seemed to have. Like Lucy, my mom also selfishly made a lot of familial sacrifices in the name of some higher being she believed in (in this case the Christian God and our church), and dragged me and my sister along. So what I liked best about this book was the way it portrayed that constant state of uneasiness, of being unsettled and unsure, and of feeling like you would never be as important to your parents as their next argument or escape or tiniest of whims was. Even in its form - skipping through and recounting several times when Lucy dragged her kids away from their father and their school to some other place and some hare-brained scheme - and leaving the reader right when they get back from one of these trips and are clearly poised to embark on another, the book suggests the unending, cyclical nature of this kind of life. And there truly is no guarantee that it will end; I remember being stressed from the moment I realized that what my parents were doing was fighting, probably around age 7 or 8, to the moment they got divorced when I was 18.

I do take a little bit of issue with the “gay” dalliance storyline. In a certain light, Sati looks a little like the old “predatory gay” trope, or at least there’s a weird power dynamic in their relationship that makes it tread close to abuse (juxtaposed with May’s extremely abusive relationship with their English babysitter Greta, her relationship with Sati seems idyllic, but I think it really just serves to drive home the point that May is understandably desperate to be important to anyone, and so her interactions with both Sati and Greta seem at least a little fucked up). I think we were meant to feel for Sati a bit, though, because her character and her history is complex. I was certainly intrigued by her, but I think the author ultimately writes her off as a mean girl who flits from one plaything to another.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for any positive queer themes, or an abundance of queer themes in general, this is probably not the book for you, despite what it’s status as a Lambda nominee would suggest. However, if you too can relate to this kind of familial dynamic or have at least one selfish parent, you might relate to the story, to an uncomfortable degree, in which case it might be worth your time. There is nothing so groundbreaking here to make me label it a must-read, though.(less)

like · see review

Jul 02, 2009 adventurat rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, fiction

Borrowed this one from someone at work, when it was making the rounds. Interesting story, well told from the POV of the teenage daughter, of particularly bizarre episode in her parents' chronically rocky marriage when her mother takes the narrator, May, and her brother Eden, from London to a California ashram, to do some healing. What the children first see as a holiday turns into permanence, and they begin to make friends and go to school on the ashram, and their mother becomes more and more in...more

like · see review

Jul 02, 2012 Chak rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Chak by: Amy K. - gift.

Shelves: fiction

Tiger Tiger is a preciously-written, coming of age book dealing with one of the many times a restlessly unfulfilled mother runs away with the children to leave the emotionally neglectful father, as seen through the eyes of the pre-teen daughter. Craze is unflagging in her ability to evoke nostalgia and fragile intimacy in what seems like every scene, and because of that, it was easy to get through, but difficult for me to read. I felt too sorry for the children and couldn't reconcile a mother (a...more

like · see review

Jan 08, 2011 Danna rated it 2 of 5 stars

The book is narrated by a precocious adolescent girl who is dragged from her home in England to sunny California by her scatter-brained and eternally seeking mother. Mom drags daughter and younger son to an ashram and immediately begins to worship a guru there. From the story, the mother appears to be the type with a large spiritual void and always looking for a way to get out of herself & her life. Interesting look at an ashram life, which seems to border on a cult, and how they finally esc...more

like · see review

Aug 02, 2008 Gabrielle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is what I had originally written for the New York Post (to see, go to http://www.nypost.com/seven/07202008/postopinion/postopbooks/tiger__tiger_120687.htm) sans edits:

Galaxy Craze’s exquisite second novel, "Tiger, Tiger,” makes you want to keep glancing at the author pic on the jacket: a strawberry-blonde beauty with a slightly pained expression, as if she were seeing the world for what it really is — not always pleasant — but seeing it with poetry.

You look at it when asking yourself with...more This is what I had originally written for the New York Post (to see, go to http://www.nypost.com/seven/07202008/postopinion/postopbooks/tiger__tiger_120687.htm) sans edits:

Galaxy Craze’s exquisite second novel, "Tiger, Tiger,” makes you want to keep glancing at the author pic on the jacket: a strawberry-blonde beauty with a slightly pained expression, as if she were seeing the world for what it really is — not always pleasant — but seeing it with poetry.

You look at it when asking yourself with heartfelt compassion, Did something like this happen to Galaxy? Was her mother as restless as narrator May's mom, Lucy? (“Our mother wanted so much from the world, of love and happiness and other invisible things with wings.”)

The fact is that in Craze’s deft hands it all rings true — whether it happened to the author or not.

British mum Lucy and dad Simon married young. “When they had first met, my mother had been attracted to Dad because he was interested in spirituality. They traveled to India together to meet the Maharaji.” Now, mid-80s, the marriage is a series of breakups and reconciliations. “‘There has to be more for us . . . than working in the shop all day. Don’t you think? . . . Simon?’” Dad, however, “a working class boy” who “pulled himself up in the world,” is perfectly content, with his family, a house “in a good location,” smoking the occasional joint and running his antiques store, where Keith Richards and Annie Lenox shop.

Then Simon is off to Delhi but just for business, and when Lucy insists on the family tagging along, he rebuffs her. While he is away, Lucy impulsively decides to take the kids on their own little “summer holiday,” dragging May, 14, and brother Eden, 10, off to an ashram outside L.A. to visit her old friend Renee.

It must be an innocuous place, you think, if it is run by a woman: “‘It’s like a large family and Parvati is the mother,’ Renee said. . . .” Still, there’s something ominous as the gates close and lock behind them and a blissed-out Renee adds, “that to leave or enter . . . you must have permission from Parvati.”

Soon May meets the undine, sylphlike Sati emerging from the ashram pond, where lovely sun-browned children while away the days: “The water fell from her like rain, sliding down her tan body, landing on the grass.” In Sati, May finds the best friend she’s been longing for in London — and more: “Our eyes met and I felt a flicker, like the flame on a matchstick. . . .” Days with adolescent awakening ensue. Soon the visit has stretched much longer than a summer vacay. But something’s not right in Parvati’s paradise. Sati appears increasingly more like a California version of a Nazi Youth. May and Eden can’t call their dad who’d been left unwittingly. And who is this guru who seems so willing to accept the many gifts, sometimes too precious, her disciples offer? “‘A guru is a guru,’” one child explains.

What at first glace appeared a peaceful respite begins to look more and more like a cult.

Craze’s gorgeous prose is all in the incisive detail. She wields a scalpel, cutting from the flesh of life, coolly, sometimes even ruthlessly, but always with precision. And what emerges from “Tiger, Tiger” is a skillfully rendered, bittersweet family portrait: a loving but self-involved father; a mother striving to be the warm, caring mom she herself never had while seeking to satisfy a yearning that perhaps might never be fulfilled; and two children fending for themselves in a strange and sometimes brutal world, where loss of innocence can occur over and over again.

(less)

like · see review

Dec 23, 2008 Sue rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, bookbag, read-2008

This book is narrated by May, the teenage daughter of a troubled marriage. Life changes dramatically when her mother whisks May and her younger brother Eden off to California, to live for a while in a Hindu style ashram.

May awakens sexually, and her mother has to decide between commitment to the ashram or to the people she cares about.

Well written, surprisingly light weight despite thought-provoking issues. I read it in just two days and very much enjoyed it. It's apparently sequel to the auth...more

like · see review

Jun 14, 2013 Annie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked Galaxy Craze's first book better. A quick read with an abrupt ending. I mostly felt sorry for the younger brother all the way through this book.

like · see review

Apr 28, 2009 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a light look at ashram life in California. The story of a woman searching for something she already posessed. It was a quick read and I enjoyed it.

like · see review

Apr 01, 2011 Amy McNamara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sad and lovely. Too short.

like · see review

Jul 26, 2009 Joelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Could've been a better story - but the ending was blah..Have to read her other book now.

like · see review

Mar 12, 2009 Renee rated it 3 of 5 stars

A strong beginning, but I felt like she got bored with the premise after a while.

like · see review

Mar 27, 2009 Zoe Ranson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Really enjoyable.
The clear montage of simple images and realistic grounding evoked the settings of London and the Ashram with colour and captured a sense of the age of the narrator.

like · see review

Feb 28, 2009 Lori rated it 1 of 5 stars

Loved the title and the author's name but couldn't get into the book. May try again some day.

like · see review

Nov 09, 2008 Lizzie Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Loved it. I wish she wrote a book every month.

like · see review

Jan 17, 2009 Danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Liked it alot!

like · see review

Jun 16, 2013 Michelle marked it as to-read

Jun 16, 2013 Alisha Cox marked it as to-read

Jun 13, 2013 Amanda marked it as to-read

Jun 13, 2013 Aileen Atkins marked it as to-read

Jun 08, 2013 Chantal marked it as to-read

Jun 04, 2013 Logan marked it as to-read

Jun 03, 2013 Gill marked it as to-read

Jun 03, 2013 Lil Gomez marked it as to-read

Jun 03, 2013 Kyla marked it as to-read

Jun 03, 2013 Alexandria marked it as to-read

Jun 03, 2013 Melody marked it as to-read

Jun 01, 2013 Amber marked it as to-read

Jun 01, 2013 Ariel marked it as to-read

Shelves: queer-reads

Jun 01, 2013 Vera marked it as to-read

May 31, 2013 jay marked it as to-read

Shelves: to-be-shelved

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (4)

Popular Shelves

to-read

118 shelves

fiction

5 shelves

queer-reads

1 shelf

to-be-shelved

1 shelf

vacation-reads

1 shelf

not-listed-yet

1 shelf

auf-gar-keinen-fall

1 shelf

young-adult

1 shelf

speech-stuff

1 shelf

c-authors

1 shelf

About Galaxy Craze

Galaxy Craze (born 1970) is an actress and writer. She moved to the U.S. with her mother in 1980. She appeared in a few independent films in the late 1990s, and wrote a novel, By the Shore, published in 1999. She is a 1993 graduate of Barnard College.

Craze told an interviewer that she "didn't say I wanted to be a writer, I just knew that's what I like to do." Another interviewer described her "bea...more

More about Galaxy Craze...

Books by Galaxy Craze

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Tiger, Tiger

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Tiger, Tiger
avg rating	preview: Tiger, Tiger Goodreads rating: 3.11 (47 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3799704-tiger-tiger?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328822615l/3799704.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3799704-tiger-tiger?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Tiger, Tiger by Galaxy Craze[/url]

Tiger, Tiger

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

combineOther Editions (4)

Popular Shelves

About Galaxy Craze

Books by Galaxy Craze

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Tiger, Tiger

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (4)