“But children die how they have been living -with hope. They don’t know what is happening, so they expect nothing, they don’t ask you to hold their hand, but you end up needing them to hold yours.”
In an unnamed Balkan country still suffering from the war, Natalia, a young doctor, is trying to decipher her grandfather’s recent death. He died in mysterious conditions, after telling his wife he was going to visit Natalia. However, the grandfather’s body was found in a remote village unknown to the family. Through childhood stories told by her grandfather, Natalia tries to unravel the mystery of his death.
There are two main stories; both filled with magical realism elements and superstition. The first one, the Deathless man, is about an immortal man who encounters Natalia’s grandfather multiple times in his life. The second, Tiger’s Wife, about a tiger that escaped from a zoo during the second world war and terrified the nearby village where her grandfather lived. Obreht intertwines past and present with these stories (and even stories within these stories), and as Natalia’s searches for answers we learn from her grandfather’s life, the brutality of the war and the folklore of the region.
I have to say, although the book had huge potential it did not reach it. The strongest part of the book is the writing. With beautiful prose, Obreht easily turns words into images, transporting us to this unnamed country, all of this while easily transitioning from multiple narratives. However, one does not become emotionally attached to the characters. Natalia’s development as a character is almost non-existent, as she quickly becomes a superficial character (and the grandfather becomes the main character). And the stories, which could have been amazing, feel inconclusive, and even purposeless… I thought that by the end I would understand why Natalia was telling them, but that moment never came, they just faded away.
About Thea Obreht
Thea Obreht was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, in 1985. Fleeing from war, her family moved to Cyprus, then Egypt, to finally settle in the US. She studied an MFA at Cornell University. With The Tiger’s Wife, and at 25, she became the youngest person to ever win the Orange Prize.
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