Stephanie Jane reviewed The tiger's wife by Téa Obreht (Orange Prize for Fiction)
Kept me gripped from the first page to the last
5 stars
If, like me, you are a fan of Latin American magical realism novels then I think that Téa Obreht's Balkan addition to the genre will be right up your street. I had high hopes for The Tiger's Wife, having already been blown away by Obreht's more recent work, Inland, and I'm delighted that The Tiger's Wife didn't disappoint me at all. The epic storyline encompasses three generations of a family in the former Yugoslavia, crossing the newly instigated border between countries separated by the civil war. It also occasionally looks back as far as the Second World War and beyond reminding us that this part of Europe is regularly subject to violent upheavals and mistrust between its peoples. Deftly woven in to this narrative are two folklore fairytales, each told as if they are equally true, yet with aspects that (almost definitely) could not have really happened. Or, perhaps, in …
If, like me, you are a fan of Latin American magical realism novels then I think that Téa Obreht's Balkan addition to the genre will be right up your street. I had high hopes for The Tiger's Wife, having already been blown away by Obreht's more recent work, Inland, and I'm delighted that The Tiger's Wife didn't disappoint me at all. The epic storyline encompasses three generations of a family in the former Yugoslavia, crossing the newly instigated border between countries separated by the civil war. It also occasionally looks back as far as the Second World War and beyond reminding us that this part of Europe is regularly subject to violent upheavals and mistrust between its peoples. Deftly woven in to this narrative are two folklore fairytales, each told as if they are equally true, yet with aspects that (almost definitely) could not have really happened. Or, perhaps, in the case of the eponymous Tiger's Wife at least, there is a strong thread of truth.
I was completely captivated by this ambitious, meandering novel. The Tiger's Wife is not an easy read, but I found it to be a compelling one. I could recognise why it was an award-winning work on its publication a decade ago and its themes of alienation, isolation and communities turning a blind eye to intolerance are sadly still just as relevant everywhere. Téa Obreht writes with incredible grace and poise, a natural storyteller who pitched and paced her tales in such a way as to keep me gripped from the first page to the last.