The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife (2011) by Tea Obreht. In a Balkan country healing from years of conflict (one assumes it is the former Yugoslavia), Natalia, a young doctor, arrives at an orphanage on a mission of mercy. But the narrative flashes back and forth between the past and the present, with seemingly endless digressions into the life of Natalia's grandfather, who has recently died. At times fascinating, this book is well written but just didn't hang together for me. It was interesting enough to keep me reading, but when I would come back to it from day to day, I had trouble remembering which strand of the story I was in, and how it related to the other strands. This may have been as much my fault as the author's, but I've read a lot of books and this isn't a common problem. Grade: B