Beautiful, Haunting and Lyrical

Originality is what has made ‘The Tigers Wife’ stand out as one of the best debut novels of 2011. The fact that it was awarded with the Orange Prize for Fiction was no surprise, with its unfamiliar themes and Obreht’s individual approach to story telling, this story is one of a kind. Obreht’s choice to intertwine Natalia’s journey being a young doctor, with her grandfather’s folk tales is the most interesting aspect of the book. It is something that shouldn’t really work, but here it works splendidly.

The book is impossible to place into a specific genre, it is not a romance or adventure, nor it is just a drama. It has so many different themes and features that it cannot just be deposited into just one single category. The book is written in a slow, gradual pace to build up the anticipation of the mystery. Obreht did not mean for this novel to be fast paced and action packed, she wanted her readers to sit back and take in what they were reading, so they could enjoy it at their own pace.

Even though the story is original and fresh, the main themes are not new. Even though I have stated that it is not a romance, one of the main themes is love. The love between Natalia and her grandfather, Natalia and the rest of her family and the love between the tiger and his ‘wife’.  Even though this novel is full of magic and mystery, Obreht does not shy away from human emotions. She takes on very human subjects such as memory, fantasy and loss, loss being one of the main themes throughout the folktales and real life. This is one of the great things about this story, the readers can relate the characters but can also escape from their daily lives. The relationship between granddaughter and grandfather is so raw and true; that you can’t help but feel this is all coming from Obreht’s real life experiences.

The book equally balances real life dramas with fantasy, which not a lot of stories do successfully. The grandfather’s stories makes us believe that there is still a little bit of magic left is this world, even in the most unlikely of places. As I have said before, I think Obreht should have gone into more detail about our present day characters instead on the characters in the tales. However mixing magic and reality was the main aim, and she weaves them together beautifully. The backdrop of Natalia’s country recovering from another horrific war emphasisies the passing down of these folktales helps them retain their own traditions and identities. Overall Téa Obreht’s ‘The Tigers Wife’ creates a human story, with human emotions and struggles, but also produces a charming and spellbinding magical backdrop. To help her characters understand life and everything in it.