Alright, yes, I admit it, I've been horribly delinquent on writing posts (2+ months to be exact). But there has been progress, I swear. I just haven't gotten around to writing about it.
I recently took a 2 week vacation from work with the sole intention of doing as little as humanly possible. Or at least doing as little as possible that resembled work. I spent part of it at a gorgeous resort in Mexico and part of it visiting my sister and her family in Seattle. The first part of the vaca involved doing absolutely nothing other than eating, drinking, sitting by the pool/beach reading, eating, drinking, sitting by the pool/beach reading, repeat. Between airplane time and reading at the pool/beach, this allowed me to finish The Tiger's Wife in only a few days. Once I really got going, it just sucked me in.
The story is about a young woman, Natalia, in an unnamed Balkan country (I spent probably more time than the author intended trying to figure out what actual country it was intended to be based on the names of locations and the historical events described) and her relationship with her grandfather, who had recently passed away. She recounts stories that her grandfather had told her of his life, stories that are fantastic, and impossible, and almost like fables or fairytales. But stories, that when told in the way the grandfather had recounted them, seem almost plausible.
I had a bit of a hard time seeing where the book was going. There was a lot of jumping back and forth between the present story of Natalia, flashbacks of her past including times with her grandfather, stories that the grandfather told (that actually happened to him), and stories of other related characters in the grandfather's stories. When I was about 2/3 of the way through the book, I found myself really hoping that there was going to be some amazing revelation that brought all of these segments together in Natalia's ongoing narrative. And there was some amount of that in the end, but maybe just not what I was expecting.
What I must say about the book though, is that it is astounding to me that it was written by someone in her early to mid 20s. Not just astounding, but truly mind-blowing. The richness of the descriptions and the nuances of every detail was definitely what I loved the most about the book. From the sounds to the smells (I particularly loved the descriptions of the smell of the tiger), it gave so much to the story. Again, her gift for translating observation into words to enhance the narrative was just amazing.
Overall, I did really like the book. It took me a while to get in to the story (even though I was still thoroughly enjoying reading the book for the beautiful writing itself), but once I did, I had to keep reading. I would get pulled into one of the side stories (particularly, the one of the tiger's wife and the grandfather), and want to know what happened, even if that meant 80 pages straight reading without stopping (well, maybe stopping to refill my cocktail or re-apply sunblock...).
So on I go. Rather than picking up some Shakespeare to read while on vacation (I haven't seen that on any "Good Beach Books" lists, have you?), I moved on to another book from the lists, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. Still not necessarily a light and airy beach read, but considering that I read it on airplanes, it didn't really matter. So far so good. I didn't know that there was a somewhat recent movie remake of the book with Sean Penn as the main character. And I can already tell you that I definitely do NOT picture him as Willie Stark. So he's going to have a lot to prove to me. I'll definitely have to watch it as soon as I'm done with the book. And possibly the original version of the movie too.
Happy Sunday!
