“We’re all entitled to our superstitions.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (MAR 10, 2011)

This spectacular debut novel by the talented Téa Obreht, is narrated mostly through the voice of young Natalia Stefanovi. Shortly after the novel opens, we learn that Natalia has followed in her grandfather’s footsteps and studied medicine. Just recently done with medical school, she has taken on a volunteer assignment to inoculate children in an orphanage in a small seaside village called Brejevina. The book is set in a war-ravaged country in the Balkans, quite possibly Obreht’s native Croatia. Brejevina, Natalia explains, “is forty kilometers east of the new border.”

En route to her volunteer assignment, Natalia finds out about her grandfather’s death in Zdrevkov, a distant town away from home. Nobody in the family can tell why Grandpa would travel so far away from home and die in a strange place. The rest of the family members were not even privy to the one piece of information that Natalia did know: her grandfather was dying from cancer.

Just like the book’s author, Téa Obreht, Natalia too is convinced that place has a lot to do with the shaping of a man’s character. So it is that she sets off to travel to the places visited by her grandfather for some clues about the man she thought she knew, but didn’t quite. “The village of Galina, where my grandfather grew up, does not appear on a map,” she says. “My grandfather never took me there, rarely mentioned it, never expressed longing or curiosity, or a desire to return. My mother could tell me nothing about it; my grandma had never been there. When I finally sought it out, after the inoculations at Brejevina, long after my grandfather’s burial, I went by myself, without telling anyone where I was going.”

The novel’s narrative flows back and forth between two and sometimes even three threads. One part details Obreht’s current journey to the orphanage in Brejevina, her experiences with local superstitions there and eventually her journey to the small town where her grandfather died. Another narrative moves to the past—first to the immediate past shared between Natalia and her grandfather, and then way back further, when the grandfather was a little boy in the tiny village of Galina.

It is in this past that the narrative of the “tiger’s wife” unfolds—the story is a hypnotic mix of old-fashioned folklore compounded by local superstitions and gossip. The tiger that stalks the novel might just be one that Natalia remembers visiting as a child with her grandpa or one which haunted the hills of Galina years ago.

Rudyard Kipling’s famous Jungle Book is an essential element of Obreht’s novel and one can see where the anthropomorphic qualities of Kipling’s classic tales have made their way into Obreht’s prose as well. She does an outstanding job of mixing doses of these qualities with good old folklore and classic storytelling. There’s a very “Once upon a Time” quality to her writing that’s instantly arresting. As the novel progresses, Obreht describes many a colorful character in the town—the apothecary, the town butcher and other assorted characters. Each of these has his or her own special place in the overall story.

Obreht’s favorite novelist, she has said, is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One can recognize his influence especially in one story that stands out in the novel—that of Gavran Gaile, the “deathless man.” For various reasons, Natalia comes to believe that her grandfather, just before he died, was on a quest to meet this “deathless man” and she tries to understand why.

The Tiger’s Wife is also a quietly damning indictment about war and Obreht catalogs its ill effects through the ways it affects the grandfather. “In my grandfather’s life, the rituals that followed the war were rituals of renegotiation. All his life, he had been part of the whole—not just part of it, but made up of it. He had been born here, educated there. His name spoke of one place, his accent of another,” Natalia says speaking of the emotional displacement that the war brought about, and which never ever healed.

Above all, Obreht’s greatest strength is her spectacular evocation of place. In an interview with The Atlantic, Obreht has said that she is “very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.”

“What inspires me most to write is the act of traveling…I like to explore the interactions of people with place and how place influences characters’ decisions, and their conflicts with one another, and also with the place itself.” It is this inspiration that really fuels The Tiger’s Wife. It’s one of the most evocative novels I have read in a long time. Every tiny village in the Balkan country comes alive within its pages.

At 25, Obreht is the youngest on the New Yorker’s famous “20 Under 40” list. The Tiger’s Wife is an extremely auspicious start from a writer to watch. Even if the somewhat disparate threads in the book fall slightly short of tying into a seamless whole, this debut novel is easily one of the year’s best.

Obreht tackles large and complex issues here: war, loss, the sense of place and how it forms who we are. Obreht also shows how strongly superstition ties into that very sense of place. “When confounded by the extremes of life—whether good or bad—people would turn first to superstition to find meaning, to stitch together unconnected events in order to understand what was happening,” she writes. While this is universally true, it is especially relevant in the war-torn isolated landscapes that Obreht writes of so evocatively in the book.

Even Grandpa, Natalia finds, couldn’t resist the pull of place and story. Trying to make sense of his fractured country, of his own body that was wasting away, it stands to reason that Grandpa would give in to superstition and try and have his fortune read by the deathless man. After all, as one of the characters in The Tiger’s Wife says, we are all entitled to our superstitions. Even a man of science needs an occasional crutch.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 172 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (March 8, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Téa Obreht
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia Marquez Another recent novel set in the Balkans: Solo by Rana Dasgupta

Bibliography:

• The Tiger’s Wife (March 2011)

“In her every small movement she was the woman of the future, a type that would swagger and curse, fall headlong, flaming into the hell of war, be as brave and tough as men, take the overflowing diarrhea of nervous frontline troops without grimacing, speak loudly and devastatingly, kick brain matter off her shoes and go unhurriedly on. When he looked at Bern, Viktor saw the future, and it was lovely and bright and as equal as things between men and women, between prole and patrician could be.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (OCT 3, 2010)

The Best American Short Stories 2010 was edited by Richard Russo, this year. The collection contains a wide range of stories selected both from some of the most well-known and most obscure magazines and anthologies. The stories, on the whole, are impressive and I was spellbound by many of them. Usually, in a collection of twenty stories, there will be five or less that really speak to me. Here there were nine.

The foreword by series editor Heidi Pitlor speaks eloquently and poignantly to her belief that “it is indisputable that American literary journals are in danger.” She encourages readers to “subscribe to one literary journal, either on paper or online. Buy a short story collection by a young author. We must support our smaller magazines if we are to support our talented new writers.” The stories selected for this anthology were all written between January 2009 and January 2010 by American or Canadian authors. Pitlor narrowed her selection to 250 stories and Richard Russo selected the final twenty.

The stories take place in different parts of the world and in different eras. Some are serious and some are laugh out loud funny. What the best ones have in common is that they stop you in your tracks and make you think and feel deeply, long after you have finished reading the story.

My favorite story in this collection is “All Boy” by Lori Ostlund. Originally published in the New England Review, it is about a precocious, effeminate boy who is a voracious reader. His mother can’t see him for who he is and describes him as “all boy” to the other mothers in his school. Harold, eleven years old, is very lonely and has no friends. Recently, his babysitter was fired and Harold believes this was because she locked him in the closet so she could watch television undisturbed. In truth, that is not the reason she was let go. She was wearing Harold’s father’s socks when her feet got cold and he can’t stand other people touching him or his things. Harold’s mother thinks that being locked in the closet develops inner resources. Harold likes the closet. It makes him feel safe. “The familiar smells of wet wool and vacuum cleaner dust, the far-off chatter of Mrs. Norman’s television show…” make him feel safe. A child as lonely as Harold can find a whole world in his closet.

Lauren Groff’s short story, “Delicate Edible Birds,” is loosely based on the life of Ernest Hemingway’s third wife. Just before the German invasion of France during World War II, reporters unknowingly knock on a cottage door belonging to Nazi sympathizers. The reporters need food and gasoline and offer to trade gold, watches and diamonds. The peasant who is the head of the household wants only one thing in exchange – a night with the female reporter. He plans to hold all of them hostage and turn them over to the Germans until she consents. The impact of this situation on the relationships between the reporters makes for a stunning piece of writing.

Rebecca Makai’s short story, “Painted Ocean, Painted Ship,” is about a female professor who makes a huge politically incorrect mistake. She assumes that an Asian student who is silent in her classroom is from Korea when she is actually ethnically Chinese. Additionally, she believes that the student’s silence is due to the cultural differences of new immigrants. Actually, the student’s family has lived in Minnesota for generations and files a grievance against the professor. This story is sad, poignant, and laugh out loud funny.

“The Laugh,” by Tea Obreht takes us to the Ngorogoro Crater in Tanzania. A woman has been killed by a hyena and her husband and child are left to cope with her death. Her beauty and her laugh are juxtaposed with that of the hyena’s in a chilling story of revenge and guilt.

“Into Silence” by Marlin Barton is about a woman named Janey who lost her hearing when she was ten years old. Her mother is emotionally abusive and, for all intents and purposes, has stolen Janey’s life. Her mother refused to let her finish her education, makes her spend her days working around the house and has her wait on her all the time. Into this small mid-western town wanders a WPA photographer who asks Janey to assist him with his work. This experience opens Janey’s eyes as to how life could be different. We hear Janey speak through her silence.

This anthology shows us that the art of the short story is very much alive. Despite the economic downturn causing several anthologies to go out of business this past year, new anthologies have started and the web has taken on an ever larger role than it ever has. New writers of great talent abound and, for the short story lover, they are as close as your fingertips. Whether you love that piece of paper in your hands as I do, or you love your Kindles, podcasts, and web anthologies, there are beautiful short stories to be found everywhere.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 44 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mariner Books (September 28, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Best American Short Stories
EXTRAS:	Table of Contents
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another great collection: The Pen/O’Henry Prize Stories 2010 edited by Laura Furman The Best American Short Stories 2011 edited by Geraldine Brooks Our reviews of some of Richard Russo’s novels: Empire Falls That Old Cape Magic

Partial Bibliography:

• The Best American Short Stories 2000 edited by E.L. Doctorow  (October 2000)
• The Best American Short Stories 2001 edited by Barbara Kingsolver  (October 2001)
• The Best American Short Stories 2002 edited by Sue Miller  (October 2002)
• The Best American Short Stories 2003 edited by Walter Mosley  (October 2003)
• The Best American Short Stories 2004 edited by Lorrie Moore (October 2004)
• The Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon  (October 2006)
• The Best American Short Stories 2006 edited by Ann Patchett   (October 2006)
• The Best American Short Stories 2007 edited by Stephen King  (October 2007)
• The Best American Short Stories 2008 edited by Salman Rushdie  (October 2008)
• The Best American Short Stories 2009 edited by Alice Sebold  (October 2009)
• The Best American Short Stories 2010 edited by Richard Russo (September 2010)
• The Best American Short Stories 2011 edited by Geraldine Brooks (September 2011)