Reading Journal: The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht (2011)

Every time I put this book down, I didn't want to... and I think I put off picking it up for a few days at a time because I didn't want it to end. In her debut novel, Obreht gives us a narrator - a doctor, now - who carries the seeming folktales her grandfather told her when she was a girl into her understanding of her new place in post-war (former) Yugoslavia. And using frequent references to Kipling's Jungle Book, the most gripping of the stories is of a deaf-mute woman who, (through events I won't spoil!), comes to be known as the title character... also, there's a deathless man who is an absolutely enchanting creation, rendered like the rest of the story in lyrical-but-not-too-lyrical language. A spell-binding read worthy of all the acclaim it received.