The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

There are few books that I have loved from page one all the way to the end. David Mitchell is one that comes to mind immediately. I absolutely know that as soon as I open one of his novels I will be in an altered state for as long as the book lasts. Jane Eyre is another. Annie Proulx. Alice Munro.

The Tiger's Wife is one of those that took me by the hand immediately and led me into a world that was sumptuous and ripe with story telling and adventure. I would have loved to have been sitting around the fire at night, knitting with my sisters, listening to someone like Juliet Stevenson reading this story to me. Maybe with Stephen Fry reading the Grandfather bits. This is an amazing first novel (somehow I had to say that even though this girl could have been writing for years and just has not had anything else published! I don't want to jinx her or put that second-novel curse on her!) Tea Obreht is a young woman with an amazing talent for holding a rapt audience with words written on a page. The Tiger's Wife won the 2011 Orange Prize and is well deserved.

There are three stories in this novel all centring around the narrator's grandfather. The setting is in the Balkans from seventy-odd years ago to today. One story is about the Grandfather and the copy of Kipling's Jungle Book that he carries around in his coat pocket. It is a wonderful book full of awe and if you haven't read it, I recommend that you do. The second story is about a man who cannot die and has seemingly chance meetings with the Grandfather at different points in his life. The third is about the tiger's wife who is a deaf girl forced to live in unhappy circumstances in the village where the grandfather grew up in. Each story stands on its own and each is intertwined with the others.

I think I could wax on emotionally about this novel for quite a few more paragraphs but I won't. I am taking a 'writing short narratives' course at university this semester and I am learning how to say less more effectively. So...

Read this book, please. You will thank me later and I will write you a very long 'your welcome' letter and we can spend months emailing back and forth on the merits and joys of The Tiger's Wife. For now, just do yourself a great favour and read this book.