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The Tigers Wife is a novel written the way I believe novels should be written. It gave me a sense of place and time - bringing to life people, nature, history and culture. Set in the former Yugoslavia, Obreht contrasts nicely the then and now, our generation and the generation back then. Her characters cross borders, lose everything, suffer due to political decisions and long for a better life. And then she wraps everything into Magic Realism similar to Garcia Marquez, embodied in the deathless
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Mar 20, 2011
KayG
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
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audible-audiobooks,
ultimate-around-world-list
Serbia.
Dec 25, 2011
Suzanne
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
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fiction,
book-club-2013
“My grandfather never refers to the tiger’s wife by name. His arm is around me and my feet are on the handrail, and my grandfather might say, ‘I once knew a girl who loved tigers so much she almost became one herself.’ Because I am little, and my love of tigers comes directly from him, I believe he is talking about me, offering me a fairy tale in which I can imagine myself – and will, for years and years.”
The tale told to his granddaughter Natalia, is a sweeping narrative of war and humanity. T ...more
The tale told to his granddaughter Natalia, is a sweeping narrative of war and humanity. T ...more
Some books are promises that future stories will succeed where the present ones faltered. The Tiger's Wife is this kind of novel: solid prose propping up a meandering story that is thematically incomplete.
Although weaving several stories together and letting the gestalt image convey a larger idea can work, it only succeeds if the interlocking of the individual parts is damn near perfect. The separate narrative strands of this novel struggle to come together into a seamless narrative whole, in sp ...more
Although weaving several stories together and letting the gestalt image convey a larger idea can work, it only succeeds if the interlocking of the individual parts is damn near perfect. The separate narrative strands of this novel struggle to come together into a seamless narrative whole, in sp ...more
absolutely brilliant... i've read deeply over the years about 'yugoslavia' -- history from pan-slavism in the 19th century forward through what happened in the 90s -- and if i could have stated artistically what i thought was at the root of so much of the history, i could only have hoped it would have read as 'the tiger's wife'... i haven't cried at the ending of a book in a while, but i did with this one... read it...
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I quite enjoyed this book to a certain extent, but somehow I felt there was some lack of cohesion between the book&s sub-stories and the thread of the main story. I found it a bit difficult to follow at times.
I finished this book and immediately started it again. I never, ever do that. I feel a little confused - but not really in a bad way. Obreht's writing style was deceptively complex - I found myself skimming along, only to realize I'd missed something important. Can't wait to talk about it with my book group!
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Mar 08, 2011
Emily Goenner Munson
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
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2012-around-the-world
I almost never want to read books again, but as I finished this one I was ready to turn to the beginning and start again. The writing is lovely, complex and unusual. The story is so multi-layered--shifting from the present to the myth--that I feel like there are ties and strands left for me to tease out in a second reading. An excellent and memorable book.
