Customer Reviews

The Tiger in the Grass: Stories and Other Inventions

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book reads like poetry. It's been a while since I read it, but am thinking of reading it again...such a beautiful, if not sad look back on a long and rich life centered in a dry and dusty old Mexico.

Superlatives aren't powerful enough to describe this book by Harriet Doerr. I read Stones for Ibarra, liked it a lot, so rented The Tiger in the Grass from the library as an audio-book to listen to during a long car trip. Halfway thru, I was exclaiming out loud (all by myself in the car), `OMG, this is soooo good!' I liked it light years more than the Ibarra book, even. As soon as I got home, I bought a used copy on Amazon for 50 cents plus the usual postage, etc.
The first section of this lyrical, oh-so-beautifully written book is a loose memoir, a collection of impassioned memories that she wrote down for her children. She was already old when she published Ibarra, and I believe she was in late 70s or maybe her 80s when she wrote this one.
The rest of the book is composed of short pieces that are ethereal essays or somewhat longer semi-autobiographical short stories, vignettes of people she knew while living in Mexico - but all of them rise so far above the usual stuff we read that it's difficult to describe how powerful they all are, once gathered together. It's like, the individual parts are terrific, but put together, the whole is 100x greater than the sum of its part.
There's one story, I think it's called Low Tide, and it's a lovely memory of a day at the beach in 1939. The author is an adult with young children, but there's a hint of evil somewhere lurking - then we realize it's the rise of Nazism when the hamburger seller comments about bad times coming and `that German paperhanger.' At the end of the story, Doerr comments that she wanted time to stand still long enough for her to paint and frame Low Tide, a metaphor for peace and innocence. Lord, I get goosebumps all over again, just trying to paraphrase it for this review.
Buy it. Read it. Give it as a gift. Then read it again yourself, and again.
Wow.

I have enjoyed all of Harriet Doerr's books. Her personal history is also interesting. she has her own special style.

This set of short stories is similar in tone and setting to Doerr's two novels, Stones for Ibarra and Consider This, Senora. I think you're better off to read either of the novels so that you get a full feel of Doerr's beautiful writing. This collection of short stories feels like a lot of snippets that she didn't know where to fit into her novels.