The Tiger's Wife

        

       The Tiger’s Wife, written by young American author, Téa Obreht, while she was still in college has taken the literary world by storm, receiving numerous awards and ranking high on bestsellers lists for several weeks. Yet while the critics might rave, just how good does the average person find this book? 
        Like many great novels, the books starts off with a death, in this case, the death of the narrator’s cherished grandfather. Also like most other novels the circumstance of his death leaves a bit of a mystery for the main character to work on that will in the bring some greater understanding of the deceased. Readers have seen this a hundred times the difference here is that, the main character, Natalia, is on a goodwill mission to inoculate orphans in a neighboring country, so there are few ways for very to solve her mystery, except for looking back at the stories her grandfather growing up. 
       These stories retold to the reader through Natalia, are really the heart of the novel, they focus on a “deathless man” that Natalia’s grandfather meets several times throughout his life and a story about a girl and a tiger. When fully told they are revealed much about doctor’s and their relation to death, the physician being the shared profession of Natalia and her grandfather. 
       However, there are some gripes I have with this novel, first being that Natalia's initial lack of emotion over the death of her grandfather. There are numerous reasons for why this is, but for a book that makes a point of displaying the loving relationship between this grandfather and granddaughter, the reader is left with a feeling of lacking at least within the first part of the novel. 
        Speaking of the first part of the novel, it is a fairly tough book to get into, there is a fair bit of illusion and outright exposition about the Baltic Wars, but since few concrete details are given so those parts can be confusing. Yet once the deathless man stories start appearing the book really picks up and becomes a more dynamic read, that really makes the reader think about death in ways not usually considered.