Tiger Wife

The opening passage of Tea Obrecht's novel The Tiger's Wife is one of its most compelling, and draws the reader into the unique narrative. With the line, "the forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death," Obrecht could be resorting to a maudlin bit of poetic license. Instead, the author continues the existential description and thereby sets the stage for the tone and themes of the entire novel. By beginning with imagery of death, Obrecht welcomes the reader to ponder the meaning of life. A juxtaposition of life and death haunts the reader from the first paragraph. However, there are more juxtapositions that await the reader and which are foreshadowed in this early passage. The narrator states that the living "know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past." In addition to the juxtaposition of...
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