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Tiger, Tiger
Lucy has always had a volatile marriage, one marked with frequent splits and reconciliations. So when she takes her two young children, May and Eden, and walks out on her husband, no one expects it will be for good. Until she flees England for America.In the serene, sunbathed California landscape, Lucy, May, and Eden begin to believe that this new country might offer them a chance to reconnect. But when they settle in the Parvati Ashram, what first seemed idyllic threatens to sever their already tenuous family ties.Like most outsiders, May views the ashram as a cult, but her mother sees it as a place of healing and salvation. As Lucy is taken deeper into the confidence of their leader, May’s initial defenses are broken down by her friendship with the manipulative proselyte, Sati. Thoughts of England slowly begin to disappear as they settle into their new reality, where blind faith challenges human decency, testing the family’s loyalties and asking if a less-than-perfect but real life is better than a vacuous ideal.With Tiger, Tiger, Craze explores the power and limitations of human desperation, hope, and resolve as she proves that true completeness does not come from the outside, but from within
240 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2007
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About the author
Galaxy Craze
7 books160 followersGalaxy Craze (born 1972 in London, England) is an actress and writer. She moved to the U.S. with her mother in 1980 and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She appeared in a few independent films in the late 1990s, and wrote a novel, By the Shore, published in 1999. She is a 1993 graduate of Barnard College.
Craze told an interviewer that she "didn't say I wanted to be a writer, I just knew that's what I like to do." Another interviewer described her "beauty (as) a quiet, dreamy, and ethereal sort."
Craze told an interviewer that she "didn't say I wanted to be a writer, I just knew that's what I like to do." Another interviewer described her "beauty (as) a quiet, dreamy, and ethereal sort."
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 17, 2013
May is about 14-years old and lives in England with her father Simon, mother Lucy, and little brother Eden. I can tell it’s a period piece but I honestly could never decide if it was set in the 60s, 70s or 80s. The family owns and operates an antiques store. Simon and Lucy fight a lot, and seem to be constantly putting physical distance in between themselves, as in one of them runs away for a while, then comes back and everything’s fine. Lucy, left by her mother at an early age, doesn’t seem to want to repeat her mother’s actions, but that doesn’t extend to her wanting to stick around and be stable. Rather, she chooses to drag her kids along with her when she goes off on her flighty adventures. The “adventure” that takes up the bulk of the novel involves Lucy, May and Eden traveling to California to meet Lucy’s friend Renee and stay with her at the compound (“ashram,” as it’s called) of a popular guru named Parvati. They all make friends there, and before May can even blink, they’ve wiled away the summer and are suddenly committed to living on the ashram full-time. May has a wary disbelief of Parvati’s powers, and though she also misses her father and English food and her school, she finds herself becoming complacent on the ashram, mostly because she’s finally found a female friend in Sati, daughter of Parvati’s most generous benefactor. [Here’s where things get spoiler-y] Sati is definitelyprobably gay, and kind of uses her popularity and May’s lack of friends to coerce her into a sexual relationship (although May seems to enjoy it, I think she mostly enjoys Sati’s friendship and their closeness, and feeling special to someone for once in her life). Spoiler alert, Sati kind of ends up being a shitty person, so if you’re looking for a positive gay storyline, you won’t find it here. Also, if you’re triggered by sexual assault, you probably will not like this book, as there’s a pretty harrowing scene towards the end where May is accosted by a strange male.
The language is very nice, and it does a great job with firmly grounding the story in a certain place (although, as I said, I was a little murkier on what time period it was). The sense of place was important, because a lot of the conflict is internal and involves how May feels about her situation (although things really heat up at the ashram, plot-wise, but that doesn’t last as long as I thought it would). Ultimately, this is really just a trifle of a book, and it feels truncated almost as some would say it ends abruptly. But I think that it’s just a testament to the repetitive nature, the constance of the anxiety you feel, when you live with parents who are this selfish, who worry more about their petty disagreements and how they can get revenge on one another, and how they can continue to live out their youthful lifestyle, than they do about their kids. They haven’t grown past the “smoke weed, stay out all night, travel wherever you want” lifestyle, and yet they have children, so they stand, one foot in their 20s and another in their domestic adulthood, while the children struggle to keep their balance somewhere in between. I thought that the emotional state that May was in was very truthful, and I related to it a lot. My parents fought A TON, and they both were extremely moody, with each other and with me and my sister. There wasn’t ever a guarantee that a family outing wouldn’t turn into some public argument or confrontation between my parents, and like May, I always felt a little responsible, a little like I should do something to calm them down and insert myself in the middle of it, a little like I should keep my little sister away from the arguing, and a lot like I was just plain embarrassed and wished I could have a peaceful family like a lot of my friends seemed to have. Like Lucy, my mom also selfishly made a lot of familial sacrifices in the name of some higher being she believed in (in this case the Christian God and our church), and dragged me and my sister along. So what I liked best about this book was the way it portrayed that constant state of uneasiness, of being unsettled and unsure, and of feeling like you would never be as important to your parents as their next argument or escape or tiniest of whims was. Even in its form - skipping through and recounting several times when Lucy dragged her kids away from their father and their school to some other place and some hare-brained scheme - and leaving the reader right when they get back from one of these trips and are clearly poised to embark on another, the book suggests the unending, cyclical nature of this kind of life. And there truly is no guarantee that it will end; I remember being stressed from the moment I realized that what my parents were doing was fighting, probably around age 7 or 8, to the moment they got divorced when I was 18.
I do take a little bit of issue with the “gay” dalliance storyline. In a certain light, Sati looks a little like the old “predatory gay” trope, or at least there’s a weird power dynamic in their relationship that makes it tread close to abuse (juxtaposed with May’s extremely abusive relationship with their English babysitter Greta, her relationship with Sati seems idyllic, but I think it really just serves to drive home the point that May is understandably desperate to be important to anyone, and so her interactions with both Sati and Greta seem at least a little fucked up). I think we were meant to feel for Sati a bit, though, because her character and her history is complex. I was certainly intrigued by her, but I think the author ultimately writes her off as a mean girl who flits from one plaything to another.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for any positive queer themes, or an abundance of queer themes in general, this is probably not the book for you, despite what it’s status as a Lambda nominee would suggest. However, if you too can relate to this kind of familial dynamic or have at least one selfish parent, you might relate to the story, to an uncomfortable degree, in which case it might be worth your time. There is nothing so groundbreaking here to make me label it a must-read, though.
The language is very nice, and it does a great job with firmly grounding the story in a certain place (although, as I said, I was a little murkier on what time period it was). The sense of place was important, because a lot of the conflict is internal and involves how May feels about her situation (although things really heat up at the ashram, plot-wise, but that doesn’t last as long as I thought it would). Ultimately, this is really just a trifle of a book, and it feels truncated almost as some would say it ends abruptly. But I think that it’s just a testament to the repetitive nature, the constance of the anxiety you feel, when you live with parents who are this selfish, who worry more about their petty disagreements and how they can get revenge on one another, and how they can continue to live out their youthful lifestyle, than they do about their kids. They haven’t grown past the “smoke weed, stay out all night, travel wherever you want” lifestyle, and yet they have children, so they stand, one foot in their 20s and another in their domestic adulthood, while the children struggle to keep their balance somewhere in between. I thought that the emotional state that May was in was very truthful, and I related to it a lot. My parents fought A TON, and they both were extremely moody, with each other and with me and my sister. There wasn’t ever a guarantee that a family outing wouldn’t turn into some public argument or confrontation between my parents, and like May, I always felt a little responsible, a little like I should do something to calm them down and insert myself in the middle of it, a little like I should keep my little sister away from the arguing, and a lot like I was just plain embarrassed and wished I could have a peaceful family like a lot of my friends seemed to have. Like Lucy, my mom also selfishly made a lot of familial sacrifices in the name of some higher being she believed in (in this case the Christian God and our church), and dragged me and my sister along. So what I liked best about this book was the way it portrayed that constant state of uneasiness, of being unsettled and unsure, and of feeling like you would never be as important to your parents as their next argument or escape or tiniest of whims was. Even in its form - skipping through and recounting several times when Lucy dragged her kids away from their father and their school to some other place and some hare-brained scheme - and leaving the reader right when they get back from one of these trips and are clearly poised to embark on another, the book suggests the unending, cyclical nature of this kind of life. And there truly is no guarantee that it will end; I remember being stressed from the moment I realized that what my parents were doing was fighting, probably around age 7 or 8, to the moment they got divorced when I was 18.
I do take a little bit of issue with the “gay” dalliance storyline. In a certain light, Sati looks a little like the old “predatory gay” trope, or at least there’s a weird power dynamic in their relationship that makes it tread close to abuse (juxtaposed with May’s extremely abusive relationship with their English babysitter Greta, her relationship with Sati seems idyllic, but I think it really just serves to drive home the point that May is understandably desperate to be important to anyone, and so her interactions with both Sati and Greta seem at least a little fucked up). I think we were meant to feel for Sati a bit, though, because her character and her history is complex. I was certainly intrigued by her, but I think the author ultimately writes her off as a mean girl who flits from one plaything to another.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for any positive queer themes, or an abundance of queer themes in general, this is probably not the book for you, despite what it’s status as a Lambda nominee would suggest. However, if you too can relate to this kind of familial dynamic or have at least one selfish parent, you might relate to the story, to an uncomfortable degree, in which case it might be worth your time. There is nothing so groundbreaking here to make me label it a must-read, though.
February 6, 2025
what in the cult???????
August 2, 2008
This is what I had originally written for the New York Post (to see, go to http://www.nypost.com/seven/07202008/postopinion/postopbooks/tiger__tiger_120687.htm) sans edits:
Galaxy Craze’s exquisite second novel, "Tiger, Tiger,” makes you want to keep glancing at the author pic on the jacket: a strawberry-blonde beauty with a slightly pained expression, as if she were seeing the world for what it really is — not always pleasant — but seeing it with poetry.
You look at it when asking yourself with heartfelt compassion, Did something like this happen to Galaxy? Was her mother as restless as narrator May's mom, Lucy? (“Our mother wanted so much from the world, of love and happiness and other invisible things with wings.”)
The fact is that in Craze’s deft hands it all rings true — whether it happened to the author or not.
British mum Lucy and dad Simon married young. “When they had first met, my mother had been attracted to Dad because he was interested in spirituality. They traveled to India together to meet the Maharaji.” Now, mid-80s, the marriage is a series of breakups and reconciliations. “‘There has to be more for us . . . than working in the shop all day. Don’t you think? . . . Simon?’” Dad, however, “a working class boy” who “pulled himself up in the world,” is perfectly content, with his family, a house “in a good location,” smoking the occasional joint and running his antiques store, where Keith Richards and Annie Lenox shop.
Then Simon is off to Delhi but just for business, and when Lucy insists on the family tagging along, he rebuffs her. While he is away, Lucy impulsively decides to take the kids on their own little “summer holiday,” dragging May, 14, and brother Eden, 10, off to an ashram outside L.A. to visit her old friend Renee.
It must be an innocuous place, you think, if it is run by a woman: “‘It’s like a large family and Parvati is the mother,’ Renee said. . . .” Still, there’s something ominous as the gates close and lock behind them and a blissed-out Renee adds, “that to leave or enter . . . you must have permission from Parvati.”
Soon May meets the undine, sylphlike Sati emerging from the ashram pond, where lovely sun-browned children while away the days: “The water fell from her like rain, sliding down her tan body, landing on the grass.” In Sati, May finds the best friend she’s been longing for in London — and more: “Our eyes met and I felt a flicker, like the flame on a matchstick. . . .” Days with adolescent awakening ensue. Soon the visit has stretched much longer than a summer vacay. But something’s not right in Parvati’s paradise. Sati appears increasingly more like a California version of a Nazi Youth. May and Eden can’t call their dad who’d been left unwittingly. And who is this guru who seems so willing to accept the many gifts, sometimes too precious, her disciples offer? “‘A guru is a guru,’” one child explains.
What at first glace appeared a peaceful respite begins to look more and more like a cult.
Craze’s gorgeous prose is all in the incisive detail. She wields a scalpel, cutting from the flesh of life, coolly, sometimes even ruthlessly, but always with precision. And what emerges from “Tiger, Tiger” is a skillfully rendered, bittersweet family portrait: a loving but self-involved father; a mother striving to be the warm, caring mom she herself never had while seeking to satisfy a yearning that perhaps might never be fulfilled; and two children fending for themselves in a strange and sometimes brutal world, where loss of innocence can occur over and over again.
Galaxy Craze’s exquisite second novel, "Tiger, Tiger,” makes you want to keep glancing at the author pic on the jacket: a strawberry-blonde beauty with a slightly pained expression, as if she were seeing the world for what it really is — not always pleasant — but seeing it with poetry.
You look at it when asking yourself with heartfelt compassion, Did something like this happen to Galaxy? Was her mother as restless as narrator May's mom, Lucy? (“Our mother wanted so much from the world, of love and happiness and other invisible things with wings.”)
The fact is that in Craze’s deft hands it all rings true — whether it happened to the author or not.
British mum Lucy and dad Simon married young. “When they had first met, my mother had been attracted to Dad because he was interested in spirituality. They traveled to India together to meet the Maharaji.” Now, mid-80s, the marriage is a series of breakups and reconciliations. “‘There has to be more for us . . . than working in the shop all day. Don’t you think? . . . Simon?’” Dad, however, “a working class boy” who “pulled himself up in the world,” is perfectly content, with his family, a house “in a good location,” smoking the occasional joint and running his antiques store, where Keith Richards and Annie Lenox shop.
Then Simon is off to Delhi but just for business, and when Lucy insists on the family tagging along, he rebuffs her. While he is away, Lucy impulsively decides to take the kids on their own little “summer holiday,” dragging May, 14, and brother Eden, 10, off to an ashram outside L.A. to visit her old friend Renee.
It must be an innocuous place, you think, if it is run by a woman: “‘It’s like a large family and Parvati is the mother,’ Renee said. . . .” Still, there’s something ominous as the gates close and lock behind them and a blissed-out Renee adds, “that to leave or enter . . . you must have permission from Parvati.”
Soon May meets the undine, sylphlike Sati emerging from the ashram pond, where lovely sun-browned children while away the days: “The water fell from her like rain, sliding down her tan body, landing on the grass.” In Sati, May finds the best friend she’s been longing for in London — and more: “Our eyes met and I felt a flicker, like the flame on a matchstick. . . .” Days with adolescent awakening ensue. Soon the visit has stretched much longer than a summer vacay. But something’s not right in Parvati’s paradise. Sati appears increasingly more like a California version of a Nazi Youth. May and Eden can’t call their dad who’d been left unwittingly. And who is this guru who seems so willing to accept the many gifts, sometimes too precious, her disciples offer? “‘A guru is a guru,’” one child explains.
What at first glace appeared a peaceful respite begins to look more and more like a cult.
Craze’s gorgeous prose is all in the incisive detail. She wields a scalpel, cutting from the flesh of life, coolly, sometimes even ruthlessly, but always with precision. And what emerges from “Tiger, Tiger” is a skillfully rendered, bittersweet family portrait: a loving but self-involved father; a mother striving to be the warm, caring mom she herself never had while seeking to satisfy a yearning that perhaps might never be fulfilled; and two children fending for themselves in a strange and sometimes brutal world, where loss of innocence can occur over and over again.
July 2, 2012
Tiger Tiger is a preciously-written, coming of age book dealing with one of the many times a restlessly unfulfilled mother runs away with the children to leave the emotionally neglectful father, as seen through the eyes of the pre-teen daughter. Craze is unflagging in her ability to evoke nostalgia and fragile intimacy in what seems like every scene, and because of that, it was easy to get through, but difficult for me to read. I felt too sorry for the children and couldn't reconcile a mother (and sometimes father, with as absent as he was) making such poor decisions over and over again. Other adults in the story -- as few as they were -- were equally emotionally detrimental to themselves or others, such as the grandfather who retains a judgmental and insulting maid, and the parents who decide to give away their baby to their idol. Characters seemed so stunted and remote that they lost their hold on reality to me. The all-powerful guru who dishes out cruel punishments just let the family walk out of the compound? The supporting character who is dying of love for her relinquished child just merely taking drugs to ease the pain? The girl who falls in love so deeply and then stands by silently to watch her affections be thrown away? The father who barely cared that his wife, on a whim, took their children away to a cult and effectively went back to business-as-usual when they returned half a year later? The restraint of the writer was admirable in many of the same ways that Kazuo Ishiguro was restrained in Remains of the Day , but mostly I just wanted someone to come out of their golden-sparkle-of-memory stupor and act like a real human being at some point. Also, I wanted more of an ending, but that's more about the kind of reader I am than the kind of book this is, I think. Overall, an interesting summer read, by a talented writer, with some extremely frustrating, relatively-unresolved tension toward the end.
July 2, 2009
Borrowed this one from someone at work, when it was making the rounds. Interesting story, well told from the POV of the teenage daughter, of particularly bizarre episode in her parents' chronically rocky marriage when her mother takes the narrator, May, and her brother Eden, from London to a California ashram, to do some healing. What the children first see as a holiday turns into permanence, and they begin to make friends and go to school on the ashram, and their mother becomes more and more involved in the spiritual teachings of their guru, the weirdly charismatic Parvati. May's developing relationship with the manipulative Sati parallels her growing understanding of the spiritual, political, and emotional dynamics of the adult world, even as her younger brother's experience of events provides a diminishing link to childhood innocence. It's an interesting exploration of all kinds of relationships, and like real life, when the episode is over, everyone is changed by it, but there is no neat and tidy resolution of the issues and problems that underlie.
December 23, 2008
This book is narrated by May, the teenage daughter of a troubled marriage. Life changes dramatically when her mother whisks May and her younger brother Eden off to California, to live for a while in a Hindu style ashram.
May awakens sexually, and her mother has to decide between commitment to the ashram or to the people she cares about.
Well written, surprisingly light weight despite thought-provoking issues. I read it in just two days and very much enjoyed it. It's apparently sequel to the author's first novel, 'By the Shore', but thankfully it didn't read like a sequel, and clearly works well as a stand-alone novel.
Recommended to anyone who enjoys light women's fiction.
May awakens sexually, and her mother has to decide between commitment to the ashram or to the people she cares about.
Well written, surprisingly light weight despite thought-provoking issues. I read it in just two days and very much enjoyed it. It's apparently sequel to the author's first novel, 'By the Shore', but thankfully it didn't read like a sequel, and clearly works well as a stand-alone novel.
Recommended to anyone who enjoys light women's fiction.
January 8, 2011
The book is narrated by a precocious adolescent girl who is dragged from her home in England to sunny California by her scatter-brained and eternally seeking mother. Mom drags daughter and younger son to an ashram and immediately begins to worship a guru there. From the story, the mother appears to be the type with a large spiritual void and always looking for a way to get out of herself & her life. Interesting look at an ashram life, which seems to border on a cult, and how they finally escape. I enjoyed it, but definitely didn't love it. Short, quick read.
January 26, 2016
This book gives what I feel is a very true to life view of life in an ashram or any sort of a closed society.. what makes people join such a group and what makes them leave. It is written in a very evocatvive, vivid style and gives an interesting twist on the coming of age genre. I am keen to read the first book as I did not realize this was a sequel
March 1, 2009
Loved the title and the author's name but couldn't get into the book. May try again some day.
November 9, 2008
Loved it. I wish she wrote a book every month.
January 17, 2009
Liked it alot!
March 12, 2009
A strong beginning, but I felt like she got bored with the premise after a while.
March 27, 2009
Really enjoyable.
The clear montage of simple images and realistic grounding evoked the settings of London and the Ashram with colour and captured a sense of the age of the narrator.
The clear montage of simple images and realistic grounding evoked the settings of London and the Ashram with colour and captured a sense of the age of the narrator.
April 28, 2009
This was a light look at ashram life in California. The story of a woman searching for something she already posessed. It was a quick read and I enjoyed it.
July 26, 2009
Could've been a better story - but the ending was blah..Have to read her other book now.
March 18, 2015
Sad and lovely. Too short.
June 14, 2013
I liked Galaxy Craze's first book better. A quick read with an abrupt ending. I mostly felt sorry for the younger brother all the way through this book.
Read
August 9, 2014Just couldn't get into this.
Read
August 19, 2014Very quick read, finished in a day. Family life in London and a California ashram. Not very deep or insightful, but nice period piece (1980's)
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews