Reading ramble: The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

The Tiger’s Wife

by

Tea Obreht
 
On the one hand, I am left with the feeling that this author can write, and that she can tell a good tale, as she does here with the tales of the Deathless Man, of the Tiger’s Wife of the title, Luka's story, the bear man. On the other I am left feeling that as a story the book as a whole is missing something, that the totality is less than the sum of its parts, that what Obrecht may have been attempting just doesn’t quite come off.


I’d like to do a close read and see if I could make sense of how the history of what is clearly the former Yugoslavia can be found in this books characters and sub stories. Sorobor is clearly Mostrar with its famous old bridge, sadly no more, and the unnamed City must be Belgrade, but I wished it  had been clear. The former Yugoslavia’s factions – Serb, Croat, Moslem, Christian, are also all there. Perhaps how it all fits together is not apparent to me because I don’t know enough about the small details of its disintegration, else its because the ambitious analogy doesn’t work because the thread holding all the individual stories together is not strong enough. Which ever it is, I found myself slogging through the last third of the book, slightly bored by proceedings.

As I said, the author can clearly  write, her potential as a story teller is in no doubt and this is after all her first novel. So whilst I think that in parts it is much better than the other Orange Prize short and long list contenders I have read so far, It is not my favourite read so far (which sadly didn't get shortlisted), although I would not be at all surprised if the judges disagreed with me :)  However, I will make a special note to keep an eye open for next novel and look forward to seeing how she develops her style in the future.

Verdict: author with potential

What % of your income do you spend on food?

Take a moment and work it out, roughly will do.
Here in India, on just living allowance and excluding clothes, toiletries, telephone, electricity etc I probably am spending about 60 % of my money on food and I'm not skimping! I do buy nice teas, I do buy chicken, fish, mushrooms (which here are just as expensive as chicken), I do buy treats like  the occasional bar of chocolate, packet of crisps, branded fizzy drinks etc But I don't buy alcohol unless on vacation :) Since this is meant to be a living allowance then a high percentage is not unrealistic. And I still have leeway.
Back home on a salary this percentage would be much lower. If you are retired or out of work and on a fixed income you will have had to make some adjustment to your spending compared to when you had a salary, but still you will have some room for manoeuvre. What % did you come up with : 5, 10, 15%? The better off you are the smaller this % becomes. The greater % you have to spend on things of choice - your health, your children's education, your car, your house, entertainment, holidays whatever you choose. It would be interesting to see the range of % readers have.
Now check out Food Price Rollercoaster to see how the ever increasing prices of food stuffs impacts this. 
Even in the year and half I have been here in India  I have seen food prices rise and fall as they always do with seasonal availability, but behind this is a real rise. I reckon I am spending about 50% more this year than last  - vegetables that were 10 Rupees a kg are now 20 or 30 Rupees. Now my haggling should have go better, the sabzi wallas know I am here on equivalent of a local wage,albeit a good one.  So now imagine having to keep a family of 4 on this income, and pay for accommodation etc. Ok people do it. Now what happens when food prices rise – you have to eat, you cannot go to school, to the doctor if you have not eaten, everything else you can do without, food no one can do without, you have to buy it. of course the first thing that goes are any luxuries, then the quality and range of food narrows, and finally the volume. So from this it is easy to see why hunger continues to be a problem, why health issues are secondary to eating in peoples priorities, why health problems then take hold virulently as poor nutrition weakens peoples immune system, why almost every woman in rural India is anaemic with consequences for mother and child health and child development.
So next time you do your weekly/monthly supermarket run consider the others of this world you live on $1 a day and do something about it.

Chivalry is alive and well!

Today has been the hottest this year. Temperatures exceeded my first aid kit thermometer’s capabilities, so is over 43 and meoweather had us at 45C It being a Sunday I’d got up early to do my washing and had everything out drying nicely in the heat, the sabzi walla had been and the fridge was stocked with nice cucumbers for a cold soup, so I had had a satisfying first part to the morning, when I received a call from work. The electrician had arrived, could I please come in. We are about to get a revamp to our computer systems and next weekend will see me and a colleague install our new LAN. So this was the electrician to do the wiring. I said Ok I’ll be there in 20 minutes. Time to grab a shower, get out of house dress, put on some more appropriate attire for the office and walk in. I’m not 5 minutes out of our gate when I get a call, don’t come in he’s only here to check the room layout, he’s coming tomorrow. At the same point in time I have decided that I really should have taken the umbrella as a sunshade, it was 10:30 AM and the temperature was soaring ! I was glad to turn back and head home for another dip under the shower and another change of clothes.
That was this morning. Now it is late afternoon, I’ve had my siesta nap and wondering when there will  be a power cut  and if we shall have any rain. It definitely needs to cool off! I sit down to finalise another blog post when the heavens open, the thunder is unbelievably loud, so much so it physically makes you jump! I unplug my PC just in case. I go to the door and look outside. Can’t see much at all. Inside the power has gone, outside it is grey and teaming down.   Pre monsoon afternoon storm. 
That’s when I see them. At first only him. He is struggling to push his cycle of the lane up under our neighbour’s house’s veranda for shelter. Its loaded with sacks of something and must be pretty heavy anyway never mind now its sodden wet. Finally he gives up on the cycle, and just goes for cover himself.
Next thing I know he’s off running across along the side my house and over to the other lane. Then back he comes with another sack. At first I think he must have been carrying it and put it down to bring the cycle to shelter, but no its bearer now appears, a slight lady, in sari of course, and she is trying to walk over to the veranda too. 

They must have been walking along the other lane when the storm hit (probably either coming back from market or from some rice distribution and collection) their nearest cover being good 3-400 meter dash across the waste ground. No way could she have carried that on her head in this rain. By now the storm was in full swing, she was incapable of even walking against the wind, and was in fact holding on to one of the bushes, conveniently called a “gotcha“ in Oriya! And there she stood for what must have seemed like and eternity.
I couldn’t catch what he shouted or she replied, but then  - drum roll please - he was off again, on another mad dash through the storm to her rescue! And guided her across to their shelter trying to keep her under a makeshift tarpaulin. Chivalry is not dead! What a hero!
 
I only caught part of it on camera with poor quality photos and video and from the safety and dry of my doorway…… a day of contrasts, a life of contrasts….but 5*s to the unknown hero!