The Tiger's Wife

Recently, I finished a book, "The Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht, that absorbed me, really captivated me. I told a coworker the day after I finished that I read a great book about the Yugoslav Wars in the Balkans. Later I realized that's not really true. It's a story about a woman and her grandfather. Their lives just happen to be punctuated by the war--one I embarrassing admit I really didn't know anything about. It happened while I was growing up in the '90s, unaware. Very.

While reading "The Tiger's Wife" I couldn't help but thinking of a basket, seamless and beautiful in its simplicity. The story is so flawlessly woven. I read another book, "Evel Knievel Days," during which a ghost pops up and speaks grossly exaggerated Old Western. It was jarring--an annoying jolt of mixed genres. 

The name "The Tiger's Wife" alone implies something mythical, perhaps with a touch of fantasy. The main character, Natalia, travels to a town where a family is digging up a vineyard in search of a hastily buried cousin whose spirit, they believe, is making them all sick. Natalia's grandfather's life is punctuated by meetings with The Deathless Man. The tales in the book, especially that of the tiger and his wife, are so richly crafted I found myself believing them. They way I explained these examples is much too trite. You'll just have to read it.

I particularly loved a scene when the grandfather rouses Natalia in the middle of the night. He silently rushes her out of the house. He is walking with long strides down the streets, and she notices that there is no sign of life anywhere. She get the feeling they are alone in the world, such is the stillness, the absence of signs of others--eerie in a city. He doesn't tell her what they are going to see. And then she sees it, an elephant.

"My grandfather and I stopped at the bus station, and the elephant passed, slow, graceful, enchanted by the food in the young man's hand. The moon threw a tangle of light into the long, soft hairs sticking up out of his trunk and under his chin. The mouth was open, and the tongue lay in it like a wet arm.

'No one will ever believe this," I said.

My grandfather said: 'What?'

'None of my friends will ever believe it.'

My grandfather looked at me like he'd never seen me before, like he couldn't believe I was his. Even in our estrangement, he had never quite looked at me that way, and afterward he never did again.

'You must be joking,' he said. 'Look around think for a moment. It's the middle of the night, not a soul anywhere. In this city, at this time. Not a dog in the gutter. Empty. Except for this elephant--and  you're going to tell you idiot friends about it? Why? Do you think they'll understand it? Do you think it will matter to them?'"

Then he tells her that this is one of those moments. The moments you keep to yourself because it is special. You keep it to yourself because words can't convey it properly and trying to would take away some of its magic.

Not Enough Time

I just got home a little while ago from a book club meeting at the D.C. public library. I love talking about books. I feel most at ease talking in font of a group when I'm talking about a book. For this meeting, I read The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. 

The story is about two women: Cora and Louise. Cora is a 36-year-old woman bound by social constraints as much as her restrictive, welt-producing corset. She married at 17 and has been living a secretive, passionless life. She jumps at the chance to chaperone the 15-year-old Louise for a summer dance program in NYC because she grew up as an orphan there until she was sent to Kansas on an orphan train. Louise is strikingly beautiful, worldly and womanly—worrisomely so for her age, in fact. Louise is try to break all the social rules while Cora tries to reign her and look for her birth parents. Of course, she finds someone who kindles the passion in her. 

I found the settings and time period (the 1920's) as interesting as the characters. I love imagining New York as it was then. It's funny that 100 years ago tourists did many of the same things, like going to the top of a skyscraper (then just 60 stories high), taking a tour of Central Park, and seeing a Broadway show. It made me miss NY, a bit.

I like this snippet from the book. To give some context, Cora is speaking with a man who she just told her life story to. He suggests that she get a divorce.

"What would I tell people? What would I tell my sons?"

"That you want to be happy."

"That’s not enough."

"No?" He leaned closer, just a little. She drew back, looking away. The Italian woman had gone out in front of the store to sweep.

"What a waste," he said.

She looked up. They stared at each other unblinking, with just the sound of the fan and the distant scuffing of the Italian woman’s broom. 

Later in the book Cora realizes that she "lived too much of her life so stupidly, following nonsensical rules, as if she and her, as if anyone, had all the time in the world." Don't most of us do this? I remember looking up after I read this line and thinking, "There's no time, no time at all to live an unfulfilled life.

Dances With Wolves

I'm adding to my "A Sunday Night Read" series. It's about time. This past week I spent a lot of time on the metro going into DC to look at apartments. Thankfully, I can read on the train, so I did just that. Before one of my trips in, I checked out my aunt's bookcase, fingers gliding along the books' spines. I pulled out "Dances With Wolves." I remember watching the movie years ago on Grandma's couch.


I realized that I don't really like book reviews that re-hash the plot. I'd rather read about how a book moved a reader or why it is so gripping or interesting, so that's what I'm going to do here after just a sentence or two of summarizing.


"Dances With Wolves" is about a man posted at a deserted US Army fort on the frontier in 1863. Moreover, it's about the man's transformation while living among his Comanche neighbors.


Probably the movie trailer can give a better synopsis than I can if you want to check it out...

While reading, I realized that I envy Lieutenant Dunbar. He experienced a different culture, a different world even. He was accepted by the people. He experience both the simple beauty (dances and tipi villiage life) and harsh reality (scalping a wagon-full of whites that killed buffalo for their fur and left the rest to rot) of Comanche life. 

It's the newess, the ultimate foreignness that gets me about Native American stories. I love learning about different perspectives. I'm also nostalgic for simpler times and the beauty of nature. It makes me sad to think about what was lost here in our country, but then doesn't it most people? I'm grappling to explain my feelings. I guess basically I'm in awe of something so radically different from what I know.

"Dances With Wolves" isn't preachy about the plight of the Indians. No, I didn't like the book for any feelings of remorse or melancholy it stirred about that. In fact, there were many lines in the book that I loved just for what they say about life. By the end of the book I had dog-eared 10 or so pages. In one passage the author, Micheal Blake, explains how Lieutenant Dunbar releases himself from the grip of the clock. I think this was his first step in freeing himself from the conventions of white society. 

Letting go of time is amazing. I know because when I go to my family's cabin in Canada measured minutes and hours cease to exist for me. Remembering this feeling inspired me to post a poem I wrote about a day on Green Lake.

"He woke with the sensuous afterglow of having surrendered completely, in this case to a nap...Shadows were creeping across the hut's doorway, and curious about how long he had slept, Dunbar pulled out the simple, old pocket watch that had been his father's. When he brought it to his face, he saw that it had stopped. For a moment he considered trying to set an approximate time, but instead he...hung the heirloom on a convenient hook a couple feet above the bed. He stared at the numbers on the watch's face, thinking how much more efficient it would be to work when a person felt like it, to eat when a person was hungry, to sleep when a person was sleepy. How it will be to live without time for a while, he thought."

What slaves we are to clocks. Throughout the course of my day I must be more concerned with the time than any other one thing. How nice to let it go, once in a while, especially when reading a a good book.

A Sunday Night Read

Books are my life.

I actually said this to my boyfriend the other day. Melodramatic? Maybe....maybe not.

I love reading. Have for a very long time. I think my book-love bloomed in second grade when my mom bought me the complete set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" series from a Scholastic book order. I read them during the summer before third grade. I remember my grandma told me that I carried around my latest book the way a preacher does his Bible. 

I'm pretty sure that series started my love affair with reading, just the way the Harry Potter series did for my sister several years later. Come to think of it, I haven't thanked my mom for buying me those nine plaid-covered books. I should. I will.


Anyway, here it is Sunday and if I've had a good weekend that means I've likely spent nice chunk of it reading. I'd like to try out a blog series called "A Sunday Night Read." I share my thoughts on books I've read that share a positive message or just books I loved.


The first book I'd like to share is "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein. The book is told from the viewpoint of a dog, Enzo. He shares with readers not only the inner thoughts of a dog, like his ongoing war with the squirrels in his yard, but also keen observations about his people.


Of course there is sadness but it's not something to dwell on because there so many insightful passages. I found myself rereading several paragraphs, marking them, dog-earring the pages, rewriting quote after quote. Enzo gives readers such a fresh look on life. I paused often to consider life from this new perspective. What I loved about the book, too, was that the message was never preachy. Just simple. Blunt. Truthful.


I read  "The Art of Racing in the Rain" a year ago, but the messages inside its pages have linger on in my mind. So much so that I wrote this quote on my bedroom mirror as a daily reminder to enjoy life to the fullest.

"To live everyday as if it has been stolen from death. That is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life. To separate myself from the everyday burden. To say I am alive. I am wonderful. I am. I am."

-Enzo, "The Art of Racing in the Rain"

Read this book. You won't be sorry that you did.

PS - Thank you to my dear friend Sally who originally recommended this book to me.