Fairy tales reveal truth of loved one's past

By Courtney M. Holbrook

Do you remember sitting on your grandfather’s knee, listening to stories of the past?

Half reality, half folk tale, those stories developed our lives, teaching us lessons while entertaining our childhoods. They were fairy tales.

Yet, entwined amongst elves and Aesop-like animals were morsels of truth, waiting for us to grow up and recognize their worth.

Téa Obreht’s “The Tiger’s Wife” is the story of Natalia, a young doctor vaccinating orphans in the Baltics, and the fairy tales her now-dead grandfather told her. The grandfather, Dr. Stefanovic, has passed away after leaving his home for a strange town. His copy of “The Jungle Book” — which never left his side — has gone missing.

It is in Stefanovic’s fairy tales that Natalia will discover the truth of his past — and the horrors of the Baltic Wars.

To understand both Stefanovic and the destruction of the Baltics, one must understand “the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like rivers through all the other stories of his life.”

This is a devastating novel, one where truth lies thinly veiled beneath the twists and turns of myth.

At 25 years old, Obreht’s ability to play with language and fantasy is remarkable. Though Obreht left Yugoslavia at 12, she has a keen sense of the damage wrought upon an entire people trapped in the aftermaths of war.

Obreht’s talent lies in her vivid writing style and sense of youthful optimism, which keeps such dark material from drowning in turgid prose. Her ideas of war and blood surprise you. They are not mindless evils, but things that trap you through “hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them.”

“The Tiger’s Wife” is not told in a linear fashion, but through stories. This may turn some readers away — at times it is difficult to hold onto the plot when Obreht gets going.

However, these literary flights are not signs of an overeager young writer, but a classic tool of Baltic writing. Obreht has clearly absorbed the stories of her own Yugoslavian culture, where animals do speak and men live forever.

The magical elements of the tale are placed in stark contrast to Natalia’s own experiences. Orphans die and men dig up dead bodies to appease superstitions.

After reading “The Tiger’s Wife,” one realizes that it’s not just a story of war or a girl coming of age, but of how a way of life can vanish.

That is why Natalia’s grandfather tells his stories.

That is why our grandfather told us his own tales.

Our elders narrate their stories so that we can glimpse the lives they once lived, the loves they once had — and for a moment, understand a past that will never return.