Sometimes when we write The Story behind the Pick for our First Editions Club, few readers have ever heard of the book, but that is not the case with Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife. Since its March 8th release, it seems The Tiger’s Wife and Téa Obreht have been front and center in every major newspaper. Some of the obvious points we’ve heard about her include her young age of 25 and being selected for 20 under 40: Stories from The New Yorker and as well as the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 under 35.

The last time The New Yorker had put together such a collection was in 1999 and included excerpts from Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” as well as the work of Junot Diaz, Jonathan Franzen, Jhumpa Lahiri and Edwidge Dandicat. Téa has this to say about the honor:

[It’s] really humbling, in the most positive way. It’s surreal to be attached to this list of writers I admire. But I’m not going to let it go to my head.” (Publisher’s Weekly Interview)

The Tiger’s Wife is a complex, ambitious and beautiful novel. Natalia, a practicing doctor, must come to terms with the life around her which none of her medical training can answer. Her grandfather, a great storyteller and physician, mysteriously passes away in a village far from home.

With his belongings are still in the village, Natalia’s grandmother is nervous about getting them home before the family’s Eastern Orthodox mourning ritual is passed. Meanwhile, at the orphanage where Natalia is helping sick children, a family is digging night and day to unearth a body they believe to be causing the sickness.

Throughout this time period, Natalia begins to understand that the myth of the tiger’s wife actually surrounds real people from her grandfather’s hometown. Weaving myth and allegory from traditional Serbian and Croatian literature into the plot of the narrative, the reader begins to see life reflected in these long-told stories. Michiko Kakutani, writing for the New York Times, expounds on the strong presence of myth in The Tiger’s Wife:

“Ms. Obreht, who was born in the former Yugoslavia . . . writes with remarkable authority and eloquence, and she demonstrates an uncommon ability to move seamlessly between the gritty realm of the real and the more primary-colored world of the fable. It’s not so much magical realism in the tradition of Gabriel García Márquez or Günter Grass as it is an extraordinarily limber exploration of allegory and myth making and the ways in which narratives (be they superstition, cultural beliefs or supernatural legends) reveal–and reflect back–the identities of individuals and communities: their dreams, fears, sympathies and hatreds.” (March 11, 2011)

While there is much to discuss regarding the novel and its author, it would be a great oversight not to mention the story of how it came to be published. It is another story of precociousness.

Téa Obreht’s 30-year-old agent, Seth Fishman, got about half-way through the sixty-page manuscript before he had to stop and pace to contain his elation. Tiger’s Wife became his first book to ever sell as an agent. While on jury duty, editor Noah Eaker read the book-length version and excitedly e-mailed his colleague at Random House and pleaded with her to read it over the weekend. At that time, Eaker was still an editorial assistant and a mere 26-years-old.

In an age when anti-intellectualism sometimes feels rampant, you have teams such as this group of young people producing great literature that will be long remembered.

The Tiger’s Wife is published by Random House with a first printing of 25,000.

While Tiger’s Wife is the kind of novel you just want to get lost in, here is list of commentary that Lemurians have been reading over the past several weeks:

Death and Tigers: PW Talks with Téa Obreht, Publisher’s Weekly, 1/17

The Practical and Fantastical, The Wall Street Journal, 3/5

Magical Realism Meets Big Cats In The Tiger’s Wife, NPR, 3/8

Luminous Fables in a Land of Loss, The New York Times, 3/11

A Mythic Novel of the Balkan Wars, The New York Times Book Review, 3/13

Author Earns Her Stripes on First Try, The New York Times, 3/14

Téa Obreht will be at Lemuria signing and reading The Tiger’s Wife at 5pm on Wednesday, March 23rd. The Tiger’s Wife is Lemuria’s March First Edition Club Pick.

Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. As mentioned before, she has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Téa Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York. (www.teaobreht.com)

by Kelly Pickerill

Ellen is sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office on the army base of Fort Hood, waiting to hear the results of a test. The waiting is making her thoughts run wild; she fears that her cancer’s back, that insidious disease that has taken her breasts already, and that has in many ways derailed her family’s life.

Then she gets a phone call. Her teenage daughter and five year old son aren’t in school today, does she have a doctor’s note? She doesn’t. She sent them to school that morning.

This is how “Remission” begins, one of the most haunting stories in Siobhan Fallon’s book of short stories, You Know When the Men Are Gone, centered around the families at Fort Hood military base in Texas. I finished the book a few weeks ago, reading it through quickly in a weekend. There is something about each of the stories that pulls the reader along; they evoke emotions that we all experience and can relate to.

In one story, a sergeant’s widow continues living at Fort Hood after her husband dies, though she avoids the busy supermarket when it’s payday and isolates herself at home, begrudgingly hosting the supportive and concerned friends and colleagues of her husband who are dropping by less and less frequently. In another, a husband, a soldier on leave, is so suspicious that his wife is having an affair that he hides in their basement, stalking her in order to catch her in the act, though he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.

It is a testament to Siobhan Fallon’s artistry that she has told the stories of these families affected by our current war with such a subtle, sober hand as to make their world come violently alive.

Joe writes about selecting You Know When the Men Are Gone for our January First Editions Club selection here. Lisa writes about the special appeal this collection of short stories will have to military families, and Lemuria customer Donna Evans shares her connection to the book–read all about it here.

Siobhan Fallon will be signing today at 5:00 and reading at 5:30.

When I read You Know When the Men Are Gone, I was impressed with Siobhan Fallon’s writing alone. The stories could have been about anything. It was clear Fallon knew how to write a good short story.

But since her stories are about military family life, there is no doubt many readers who are part of military families will find special meaning in this debut collection. We happened to learn that a customer of Lemuria is not only part of a military family but is also acquainted with Siobhan Fallon through her son-in-law.

Donna Evans’ son-in-law became life long friends with Siobhan’s husband, Major Evans, while they were both living in Hawaii. Major Evans was actually a groomsman in her daughter’s wedding. As a wedding gift, Siobhan gave her daughter and her husband an advanced copy of You Know When The Men Are Gone.

Donna shared these thoughts with us:

“After our daughter read it she quickly handed it off to me, knowing I’d like it. We have a number of military men in our family and we are very patriotic. Our son in law Captain Lowell Goldman was deployed to Afghanistan during his courtship with our daughter (Ellie Evans Goldman). Of course, I loved getting to read these wonderful stories which also happened to teach me some things I could not have known about the intimate issues of military families.”

“Siobhan has described family life at Ft. Hood before, during and after deployment during the early 21st Century. The book is so contemporary. I don’t think it would have been written quite this way in the Viet Nam or World War II eras. The type of warfare, the roll of women in society, the use of email and telecommunications from the battle front are all current. These colorful stories include tales of love, strength, longing, worry, jealousy, anger, and forgiveness. There are acts of sisterhood among the wives, heroism and humanitarianism from the soldiers, misbehaving children who don’t fully understand their parents’ problems, and passionate love. Any American citizen would benefit from reading about the sacrifices made daily by our ‘families in uniform.'”

In the video below, Siobhan Fallon speaks candidly about her book and life on a military base.

Joe writes about selecting You Know When the Men Are Gone for our January First Editions Club selection here. Siobhan Fallon will be signing at 5:00 and reading at 5:30 on Tuesday, February 1st.

January’s First Editions Club can be one of the hardest to pick, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. Think about it, there are so many books coming out in the three months before Christmas, holiday sales etc., that January turns out to be somewhat of a dry month for publishing. So, very few books being released equals very few choices for the First Editions Club. The good news is January is the month where we have to work a little harder and dig a little deeper, and usually come up with something unique and fun. Often the pick is a first time author or an author for whom we really have to pitch a tour stop to the publisher. (all of the First Edition Club authors come to the store for a signing – it’s part of the deal) For instance Kathryn Stockett, Stuart Dybeck, Mary Ward Brown, and William Gay have all been January FEC authors.

January 2011’s First Editions Club pick is You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon. You Know When the Men Are Gone is the first book of short stories we’ve picked since Grisham’s Ford County in 2009 and before that, Pia Ehrhardt’s Famous Fathers, but we didn’t pick it because it’s short stories, (although I do love to promote the short story) no, this pick came about purely from reading and enjoying a book.

You Know When the Men Are Gone is a collection of somewhat connected short stories. This isn’t one of those books where each story has the same characters, or where the stories can be pieced together into a sort of loosely hinged novel, no, these stories are more connected in theme. Each is about spouses, children, or parents of soldiers in the Middle East. There are stories that delve into the soldiers perspective, but for the most part the stories are mainly from the perspective of the wives of soldiers. But no worries, this is by no means a limitation, neither is the “wartime” theme – although readers may be concerned that they won’t like the book for those reasons – as Lisa says here, “Fallon transcends the politics and gets to the heart of the matter: the families who serve our country. Besides that, she is a great writer, worthy of reading no matter what the theme.” And isn’t that why we’re here? To find that reading experience that offers that sort of transcendence?

Siobhan Fallon’s collection, published by Amy Einhorn books, is due out on January 20th. She will be signing (5:00) and reading (5:30) at Lemuria on Tuesday, February 1st.

As we finish up 2010 we reflect on the our work and our favorite books – Mark lists his favorites here. Many of my favorites were first editions club picks. Steve Yarbrough’s Safe From the Neighbors and Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn immediately come to mind because this time last year we were just learning about the first big books of 2010. I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you about the first couple of books we’re learning about for 2011.

Chinaberry Sidewalks by Rodney Crowell

Yes, this is Rodney Crowell the Nashville singer/songwriter who was once son-in-law to Johnny Cash. Chinaberry Sidewalks is Crowell’s memoir about his  Texas childhood. It’s funny, we had a signing in November for Marshall Chapman – another singer songwriter who is a friend of Crowell’s – in her book she asks Crowell about how he first came to Nashville. Crowell’s book fills in the blanks before he came to Nashville. This book is getting a lot of critical acclaim – it is reminiscent of Mary Karr’s Liar’s Club. Crowell will sign, read, and even perform a few songs on January 19 starting at 5:00.

You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

We really like picking first time authors for our First Editions Club. It’s fun to work with an upcoming author from the very beginning. For instance we picked Cold Mountain and All Over but the Shoutin’ for the club in 1997. You Know When the Men are Gone is Fallon’s first book. They are short stories, but they are all connected, not by the characters, but by the themes. Each story is either the tale of soldiers in Iraq or of their wives back home. I enjoyed this book very much. Each story is full of suspense – reminiscent of Raymond Carver.

i recently finished reading our july First Editions Club pick, Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross.  damn fine book mr. ross, damn fine indeed.  i don’t think i was aware before starting to read it that one of the characters is dr. sam sheppard who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife in 1954.  i’m absolutely infatuated with true crime and will read anything that i can get my hands on about serial killers and murderers.  while sam sheppard is not the main character in mr. peanut he is the one that stuck with me the most.  as soon as i finished the novel i immediately ordered a book on the sheppard case and am planning on reading that before i write  what we call The Story Behind the Pick which we are now doing with our First Editions Club book picks on this oh so lovely blog of ours.