Two 14-years old girls from a lower-class multi-ethnic Berlin neighborhood learn about the hard truths of life during a summer when they experience sex and love, witness a crime, and are simply confronted with the realities of life.
I liked this book. It touches all the themes that one would expect 14 years old from broken families and a tough neighborhood care about. From very superficial to very deep ones. And snippets of knowledge are spread all over the erratic thoughts of the protagonist and narrator Nini. And while the jumping of Nini's thoughts from a detail to another this book is more an open window into a summer of new experiences than the narration of a single overarching story. And drama doesn't have time to build up much. Here is where the reason for 3 rather than 4 or 5 stars lies: the book lacks suspense. It fails often to bring the feelings from the characters to the reader. Longer descriptions of the other characters, settings, situations would have been nice. On the other hand when you are young your mind wonders around and feelings change quickly. One moment you cry but soon something can make you smile again.

Beautifully written - it manages to encompass such poetry in language that fits a teenager. Loved it.

Tiger Milk is the debut novel from Stephanie de Velasco, and was published on the 11th of September this year. I received this copy for review from a Waterstones giveaway, and wish to extend thanks to them for this.

This novel was quite unusual for me, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I had never read a novel translated from German before. The writing style was also quite unusual, with an almost complete lack of punctuation. Add to that the fact that the protagonists were both 14 year old girls further increased the alienation I felt when reading this.

I didn't particularly warm to Tiger Milk. I found the protagonists Nini and Jameelah to be unsympathetic and unrealistic - the things that they get up to in this book, the drinking, smoking, sex, and other things in between, I just felt like the world that the author created was something that would never be real. How often do 14 year olds get sold liquor in shops? How often do their parents let them run around at all hours of the night and do whatever they want? I just wasn't convinced. The two girls seemed overly crass, immature, and the way they spoke to each other and the things they did together did not strike me as something friends would do.

I would normally give a plot summary, but honesty I couldn't really tell you what the specific plot was. It felt more like an exercise in character development, and to de Valesco's credit, there was that. The friendship of the two girls altered significantly over the course of a summer, for reasons I won't disclose to avoid spoilers. And I do enjoy character development in a novel, which is why I thought this book was just 'okay', and not bad. But the idea and writing style overall really didn't work for me. The lack of punctuation, although it seems to be a stylistic choice, I felt really didn't work, and from glancing at other reviews, it seems a lot of people felt the same way.

If you are intrigued by the story, or by translated works, I'd say go ahead and check this out. I wouldn't go as far as to recommend it though.

2.5*