Great storytelling that focuses on puzzling out superstitions from reality, even if it's a little slow-paced and scattered.
Summary:
Natalia is on a medical assignment when she hears of her grandfather's death, long expected by her but not like this, in a town no one knew about with all his possessions missing. In trying to find the truth of what happened to the man that raised her, she recollects their lives during their country's civil war and the tall tales that they escaped through: the encounters with a deathless man throughout her grandfather's medical career and his childhood with the tiger's wife, a girl surrounded by death and mystery. But in Natalia's own medical travels, she starts to suspect that all these tales are connected and may be more real than she thought.
Verdict: 7/10
I'd only ever read Obreht's short stories before this (if you haven't read The Laugh, it's a MUST 10/10), and while her storytelling is masterful, I still thinks it's not quite meant for a novel. This felt more like each character had their own short story, with separate backgrounds and moral lessons, and then you slowly got to see how they featured in each other's and converge.
Emphasis on slow, though. The chapters were really long, mostly because Obreht is capturing an entire life in 20-30 pages, full of complexity and feeling. There are no simple characters. A wife beater isn't just abusive because he's a mean person, he had dreams and love at one time. Or an apothecary turns a blind eye to wrongdoing to protect his own secrets. Everyone has reasons for their actions. And that’s all shown in each of their backstories.
“The truth about [this person] is... To understand this, you have to go back to his childhood.” Pg. 242
But with so many backstories, it’s a little hard to keep track of the details and who the main focus should be. Just when I had gotten invested in a character, Obreht would switch to the next person. It felt like I was bouncing between timelines and got a little confusing. And the artsy storytelling, while often a strength, could sometimes leave me in the dark as to what events had really happened and which were made up.
I was also confused as to the setting. At first, I thought the intro was going before the first World War. But then Natalia mentions beepers so I think maybe it's the 60s. And then 20 pages later, she mentions Springsteen and Walkmans so possibly 80s. Only to find a quarter way through that her Grandpa was 9 in WWII, meaning the "present-day" could mean the 90s. And saying it's in a Balkan area tells me nothing about where it actually is. Despite all the description, I don’t know what to picture if I don't know the location or time period.
But once you got into a tale, you were there. I mean, each time the deathless man showed up, I was dying for more answers to his story. The intrigue had me glued to the page with a mystic playfulness and yet a small sense of dread underneath. You could never be sure who was telling the truth and what was safe, which created suspense and mystery.
The ending was again a little unclear as we get versions of the truth but not the whole. Ultimately, the reader gets to choose whether they want magical realism or a logical conclusion. There’s logic behind the legends as people find comfort in their suspicions and make meaning out of what would otherwise be senseless. And that's a special beauty that Obreht catches. It's fantastic writing and motifs. I'd slog through it again just to see how all the legends play out.
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