Nov 2011: The Tiger's Wife (Obreht)

Post date: Nov 22, 2011 6:54:5 AM

If we could apply the term magical realism here, it seems appropriate to some of the scenes and stories: an elephant on empty city streets, escaped zoo tigers living in the wild, a deathless man. The nine of us gathered at Nancy's to discuss this book were all born well before the author (in 1985) -- Smith classes of '46 - '95. We appreciated the story from Eastern Europe, the story presumably set in Croatia or a fictive rendition thereof, which we don't see that often, and not often from voices so young. In fact, one description of the teens in the City (unnamed) while the war was going on far away from them, was that they had even less reason to stay focused and realistic, because with a war going on all priorities were skewed and perspective loopy.

We didn't determine the meaning of the deathless man, other than seeing the thread of him through the story, and most of us quite enjoyed the scene where he and the Doctor dine together at the fancy hotel in the Turkish city by the river, where the tiger's wife was from, it turns out. Not all the threads of the story were so neatly interwoven, however, and the overall complaint was not enough character development of the people we thought were those central to the story.

After a rich and efficient discussion of the book, conversation moved to Occupy politics, Oakland elections, OLLI curriculum, and a baby George update with language tangent. After talking about several different possibilities, we chose The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka but later learned it's only available in hardcover until June 2012.

Thank you, Nancy, for hosting, and for the delicious spice cake.