Journey across the bone dry West and through the darkest, but most revealing depths of grief and longing. A beautifully raw, epic adventure that leaves your heart aching but full.

This is gorgeous, but...in an almost indescribable way? Like...I can’t quite put my finger on specific elements that stood out for specific reasons, although perhaps this just means that the magic of the book is how well everything works together. It felt whole, and I felt whole reading it.

The plot mattered less than the atmosphere(s) and characters to me, and yet the undercurrent of tension vibrated so low in the background that even though I didn’t consistently hear it, I could always feel it rumbling my guts. This book made me feel more than think, which is a pretty good trick.

From an earlier update:

Obreht’s writing sparkles in all the right places (rather than being rolled in self-congratulatory look-at-me glitter), and she nailed the tone. Different elements reminded me of other works (“The Ox-Bow Incident,” “Cloud Atlas,” some Ian McEwans, and also the movies “The Village” and “The Witch”), but it also felt completely original. It’s two books—and a dozen worlds—in one.

I have mixed emotions about this book!! The quality of the writing was so good, but it felt a bit drawn-out at times. The descriptions of living in Arizona in the late 1800s totally appealed to my senses, and it was easy to imagine what the characters were experiencing. The story switched between two narratives, and I found myself much more engrossed in Nora’s story than that of Lurie. I thought the chapters were a bit long, as I sometimes had a difficult time figuring out where the characters were in time when we switched narratives.

The mystical elements experienced by both characters was a very creative, if sometimes creepy, depiction of ghosts. Lurie blames his various misdeeds on the ‘wants’ of the dead people whom he believes have attached themselves to them. Nora is a mother of three busy sons but is kept company by her daughter who died in infancy, yet continues to age in her mother’s mind as if she were still alive.

The suffering endured in this book wasn’t glossed over but wasn’t written in an overly graphic way either, which I appreciated. When the two narratives are eventually woven together, it’s done in a way that’s surprising and refreshingly unpredictable. The ending was breathtaking and made the journey worthwhile. Thank you Netgalley and Random House for an ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This was good enough, but nowhere near as compelling or interesting as The Tiger's Wife.

I loved The Tiger's Wife when I read it years ago, but I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, which is a historical western set in the American southwest with some supernatural elements, and...camels. Why not. The story follows Lurie, an immigrant and a man wanted for murder, and Nora, a tough frontierswoman waiting for her husband to return from his quest for water during a drought; her two older sons have also disappeared, leaving her with her youngest son Toby, her husband's young cousin (who claims to be clairvoyant), her wheelchair-bound mother-in-law, and the constant voice of her long-dead first child, a daughter named Evelyn. Lurie's story spans his lifetime, Nora's a single day, but they converge in an ending that left me breathless. Obreht's writing is every bit as masterful as I remember, and this novel was worth the wait.

Interesting history, dreamy tone.