Review: The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

[Rvt4life2015]

This book interested me first because of the name, then after having completed the book I will say that it is one of my top favorites currently and was a great choice. The book tells the story of a young woman doctor named Natalia, who is traveling to an orphanage along with her friend to vaccinate children, and on her way there learns of her grandfathers death. Natalia is then urged to gather his belongings from an unknown town for the forty days of mourning. The book continues on to show that as Natalia was growing up she and her grandfather had a strong bond and that her earliest memory was one of her grandfather taking her to the zoo and going to see the tigers, then goes onto to delve into the relationship between her and her grandfather, her grandfathers early years as a doctor and his encounters with a young man who is actually older than him at the time and is known as the 'Deathless Man', and the story Natalia learns about her grandfathers childhood.

This book wonderfully and intricately intertwines all three of these storylines to make it into a wonderful and breathtaking book. As she is looking for answers to her grandfathers death she turns to his beloved book of many years, titled "The Jungle Book" and with it learns the story of the Tiger's wife. This story is of her grandfathers childhood and how he befriended a deaf/mute girl who was married to an abusive husband, who died later on, and became pregnant with what everyone assumed was the tiger's child. She became the superstition that everyone pinned their angst and worry on due to the coming war that go right through their tiny village. The story then weaves in the grandfathers memories of his early doctor days and his three encounters with a man known as the 'Deathless Man' who relates his story to her grandfather, who does not believe him at first but begans to believe when they met again few years later and then again when her grandfather is older. It also moves into the present where Natalia is searching for her grandfathers things as well as answers to her grandfathers death. She finds them traveling to the village where her grandfather died and then at a little hut where she meets the 'Deathless Man' herself.

This book is written in a time when a Balkan country is recovering from war and lends the book mysticism from folklore and supersitions that people believe and still hold onto even today. Reading this book was captivating and wonderful because of that and the fact that it relates all three stories so well and that as an outsider one can see the choices that people made that led them to their current life and position. The way that people struggle with the reality of death and how they handle it when it happens and being a doctor she and her grandfather were well aquainted with death. This book was very well written and I loved reading it and it gets a 5 out of 5. I would definitely recommend this book to people who enjoy folklore mixed with mysticism as well as a great story of loss and how to cope mixed with animals that bond people together.