Line #20 Literature/TheTigersWife


1	[[quoteright:328:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_tigers_wife.jpg]]
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3	''The Tiger's Wife'' is a 2011 novel by Téa Obreht, and winner of that year's Orange Prize.
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5	The story is set in the early 21st century, in an unspecified Balkan country which has recently been divided by war. The narrator, Natalia, is a young doctor who goes with her friend Zóra to provide medical aid to a small village across the border, where she encounters some rather strange superstitions. She is also dealing with the recent death of her grandfather, also a doctor, who suffered from a terminal cancer which he kept secret from everyone except her.
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7	The story mixes modern narration with folktales, family anecdotes, and descriptions of the world it inhabits. There are three main plotlines:
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9	* The story of the eponymous tiger's wife, a deaf-mute girl who lived in the village where Natalia's grandfather grew up. Unable to communicate with the villagers and abused by her husband, who was tricked into marrying her, she forms a bond with a tiger which escapes from a zoo in the City and makes its way to the area.
10	* The story of Gavran Gailé, whom Natalia's grandfather met three times during his life and who apparently cannot age or die; Gavo claims that [[TheGrimReaper Death]] is his uncle, and made him immortal [[WhoWantsToLiveForever as punishment]] for saving the woman he loved [[note]]who, it turns out, was the tiger's wife's older sister and intended bride of her husband[[/note]].
11	* The story of Natalia's youth amidst the war-ravaged City, training as a doctor, and the trip with Zóra, as well as her relationship with her grandfather and coming to terms with his passing.
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13	However, there are also many other stories within these primary plotlines, including extensive backstories of minor characters like Luka and Dariśa, which move more into an omniscient narration, given that there's absolutely no way for Natalia to know them.
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16	----
17	!!The novel provides examples of:
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19	* AbusiveParents: Luka's father who not only beat all six of his sons (especially Luka) but even threatens to rape his daughter in law, a fourteen year old deaf-mute, if Luka doesn't do the deed himself.
20	** Duré is one as well considering he's making his children search for a body that he buried despite all of the children being very ill to the point that they need medical attention. He is a bit more sympathetic in that he knows this isn't right but he believes that finding the body will solve all of his problems and make his family well again. [[spoiler:And it turns out that he's right because as soon as he finds the body, he makes sure his children are given medical attention promptly.]]
21	* AnachronicOrder: The story switches between the three main plotlines, all taking place in different time periods, plus any number of shorter subplots, and while the stories of the tiger's wife and the deathless man are dealt with chronologically, Natalia's present-day narration jumps between different points in her life in no particular order.
22	* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:Zóra has a young son by the time of the epilogue.]]
23	* ChekhovsGunman: The girl that Gavo fell in love with is revealed later to be [[spoiler:Amana, Luka's friend and sister of the tiger's wife]].
24	** Also [[spoiler: Barba Ivan, if you believe that he was the mora.]]
25	* CityWithNoName: The country Natalia lives in, the one she visits, and the city she grew up in are never specified. All you need to know is that they used to be the same place - [[UsefulNotes/{{Yugoslavia}} the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]].
26	* TheConfidant: Natalia is the only person her grandfather tells that he has terminal cancer, partly because of their close relationship and partly because she, like him, is a doctor and can help him with palliative treatment.
27	* ChildrenForcedToKill: [[spoiler: Natalia's grandfather is tricked into poisoning the Tiger's Wife, since he is the only person she trusts.]] This is one of the main reasons why he becomes a doctor.
28	* DisappearedDad: Natalia's father is conspicuously absent, but no one so much as mentions him, let alone hints at what might have happened.
29	** And considering that Natalia has the same surname as her maternal grandfather, it is unlikely that he was ever married to her mother.
30	* DomesticAbuse: Luka. It's specified that while his actions are unforgivable, he does have reasons behind them.
31	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: For the Tiger's Wife plotline. Not only do the blacksmith, Luka, and Darisa all get killed but the Tiger's Wife is poisoned and it drives the apothecary into madness until he's hanged by enemy soldiers.]]
32	* DueToTheDead: Duré and his family believe this is why they're all getting sick - Duré buried a body years ago without giving it this, and it's haunting them. Now they're obsessively searching for the body, convinced that to heal themselves they need to perform a quasi-religious ritual given to them by a fortune teller.
33	-->Wash the bones, bring the body, leave the heart behind.
34	* FreudianExcuse: Luka is an unsympathetic and abusive husband who gets far too enthusiastic about killing the tiger. However, he's a closeted homosexual who was abused by his father and overshadowed by five older brothers; dreamed of being a musician and almost made it in the City; formed a very close platonic relationship with a girl called Amana and agreed to marry her; and was then left by Amana for another man (as it turns out, [[spoiler:Gavran Gailé]]) and tricked by her father into marrying her deaf-mute younger sister, which he didn't find out until after the wedding. After that he lives a lonely existence knowing that his music has been plagiarised by his former friends. The narrator doesn't forgive what he does, but it's difficult not to find him intensely sympathetic.
35	* FriendToAllChildren: Nada may not like that there are people digging up her vineyard but won't hesitate to offer sweets or something to drink to the sick children that come by. Her husband (Barba Ivan) and son (Fra Antun) all share the same thought, especially the latter who is a monk that cares for dozens of war orphans.
36	* GoodThingYouCanHeal: Gavo, who is drowned, shot twice in the head, then drowned ''again'' all in the space of about 24 hours. And that's not the worst he's suffered.
37	* ImplausibleDeniability: Natalia refuses to admit to her grandmother that she knew about her grandfather's cancer, even though her grandmother knows perfectly well that she did and is begging her to open up about it.
38	* InterspeciesRomance: What the superstitious villagers believe is going on between the tiger and the titular character.
39	* MagicalRealism: Several instances that would be deemed outright unbelievable are almost accepted as fact such as the Tiger's Wife being in an InterspeciesRomance with the tiger and carrying his child, Duré and his family falling ill due to leaving behind a body [[spoiler:and then getting better when the body is found]], and [[spoiler:Darisa turning into a bear after he is killed by the tiger with his human body left behind.]] And then there's the case of Gavran Gailé himself...
40	* MamasBabyPapasMaybe: No one knows if the Tiger's Wife's pregnancy is the result of a random rape or Luka getting drunk enough to actually do the deed. It's hard to judge which one would be worse.
41	* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Was not giving a body its proper respects the reason why a man and his family were so sick due to a curse? Or was it because of a reluctance to turn to doctors and modern medicine, especially after a time of war and political strife? [[spoiler:When the body is found, they all start to recover with Duré finally giving in and allowing his family to be given medical attention. Either he felt confident that the curse was finally over after giving the body of his cousin its proper respects or he gave in to the insistence of Natalia, Zóra, and other townspeople.]]
42	* MeaningfulName: Zóra, who epitomises the younger generation and new, post-war culture of the country, means "dawn".
43	** Gavo may be named after Dobrosav Gavrić, the man who killed Željko Ražnatović, a prominent Serbian mob lord and paramilitary leader who's also known as ''The Tiger''.
44	* MementoMacGuffin: Natalia's grandfather's copy of ''Literature/TheJungleBook''.
45	* NiceToTheWaiter: Natalia's grandfather gives fifty dinars to a prostitute who was harassing him as an apology for Natalia being rude to her.
46	* NoNameGiven: Quite a few - the title character, most obviously, as well as Natalia's grandfather, grandmother and mother, and countless minor characters.
47	* NostalgicNarrator: Natalia qualifies as this, despite her youth, given how much of the novel is her looking back on her childhood and teenage years, and her grandfather's stories. Her grandfather is also an indirect example.
48	* OnlyOneName: Literally ''everyone''. Not a single character in the book has their surname given, though patronyms are occasionally used.
49	* OutlivingOnesOffspring: Barba Ivan and Nada's younger son, Arlo, was killed during the earlier days of the growing war and it was his dog Bis who helped them discover what had happened to him. Neither one has fully gotten over it with Nada trying to not linger on it almost to the point of vehement denial while Barba Ivan mourns in private for him.
50	* PalsWithJesus: Gavo is literally Death's nephew, although we are given no details as to how that works.
51	* {{Psychopomp}}: Gavran Gailé. Also the mora, who is strongly implied to be [[spoiler: [[ChekhovsGunman Barba Ivan.]]]]
52	* RaisedByGrandparents: Natalia's grandfather was raised by his grandmother, Mother Vera, after the death of his mother in childbirth and his father when he was very young. And Natalia herself was co-parented by her mother and grandparents.
53	* {{Ruritania}}: The country where it takes place has elements of this, especially in the parts which take place in the early twentieth century.
54	* SnipeHunt: Barba Ivan believes that Duré's search for the body that he buried is this. Because of all the flooding and the heavy rains, it's his belief that the body simply washed away and is no longer in the vineyard. [[spoiler:It winds up being averted when the body is found in a suitcase where Duré had placed it in hopes that he could find it again without it being washed away.]]
55	* SupportingProtagonist: Given how much of the novel is either Natalia talking about her grandfather or stories told to Natalia by her grandfather, you could make a very good case for him being the real protagonist.
56	* ThenLetMeBeEvil: Luka's unfortunate circumstances from an abusive family to being screwed over by so called friends and losing out on forming a marriage with a friend were more or less the driving factors that turned him into a monstrous DomesticAbuser.
57	* UnreliableNarrator: Most of the really fantastic elements are being related at second- or third-hand.
58	* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Gavo doesn't have too much of a problem with it by the time we meet him, but he certainly doesn't condone the idea.

Context Literature / TheTigersWife