The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife: A Novel by Téa Obreht

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a very rare case of a book I planned to give three stars, but was so impressed by the ending, that I upped it to four. So often I'm loving a book, only to be disappointed by a clumsy ending, or an overly explained ending that takes something magical and tries to make it concrete, reducing it to dust with the heavy hammer of rationalization. The Tiger's Wife built up a beautiful, crumbling, European folklore ambiance. It blended past with present, reality with fantasy. Most importantly, it explored what it means to find and hold onto humanity in a world of loss and death and horror. Obreht captured the magic that is our willingness to find a sense of wonder in a world of senseless violence and aching loss. And she was able to blend reality with magic, magic with reality, in a memorable and beautiful way.



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The Story Sisters

Thanks to my local library I was able to get my hands on Alice Hoffman's The Story Sisters almost a week before its June 2nd release on Amazon. In its current pre-order status on Amazon, The Story Sisters is #764 in Books. Kindle sales rank is not yet available, but the book will be sold in Kindle format.

I have read very little Alice Hoffman- just a few short stories from Blackbird House. I was impressed by Hoffman's skillful use of magical realism, her blend of fairytale and real-life family saga. She did an excellent job of returning again and again to key themes (heirloom tomatoes, the color of the light in Paris) and key story events, so that the tale felt pleasantly timeworn. Throughout, I had the comfortable feeling that the story had not been written, but passed down through many generations. Each fateful turn of events seemed preordained, unavoidable, and it was hard to imagine the story unfolding in any other way.

Hoffman wrote fantastic and complex female characters, and the story grew organically from their strengths and flaws. But her male characters were pale by comparison. In most cases the males were nothing more than plot catalysts. Some were antagonists, pushing the women into darker places, others seemed to exist only for the purpose of satisfying the needs and desires of the women who, after all they had been through, seemed to deserve the kind of quiet hero who shovels the snow, buries friends, and comes to the rescue whenever the women need him the most. The most interesting of the men, Lorry, combined aspects of the antagonist and hero, but even he was just an agglomeration of two stock characters, and was hardly a person in his own right.

These overly convenient male characters are harbingers of the only other flaw in the book. The Story Sisters is just a little too sentimental, its moral compass too conventional. A writer with Hoffman's skill could do more than just reaffirm the values of family bonds and love. That said, she pulled off this reaffirmation with great skill and beauty.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Listening to a recent PRI Selected Shorts podcast I encountered a delightful example of magical realism. The short story's title, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" practically defines magical realism: a fantastic premise treated as casually as any normal part of life.

The premise for the story is classic spec fiction stuff, and could easily produce a fantasy, science fiction, or even supernatural or horror tale. But instead of spinning the speculative premise into fictional world, Russell inserted the fantastic premise into the real world- then made it squirm to fit in. The conflict of the story becomes whether or not these weird, wild little girls will be tamed by the sisters of St. Lucy's, and eventually be able to adapt to normal life.

Strengths of the story include the use of concrete detail to make the girls raised by wolves and St. Lucy's Home seem equally real. And a liberal use of humor endears the protagonist and her sisters to the reader through her innocent, and often funny candor. But I think what really makes the story tick is that magical realism is so central to its conflict. The bizarre isn't simply present in the real world- the bizarre world and the normal world actually vie for the girls' fates. I'm interested to read some further magical realism, and to see whether this conflict between the real and the fantastic is a core convention of magical realism.