Teaser Tuesdays: The Tiger's Wife

This is the first time that I've participated in the Teaser Tuesday meme, sponsored by Should Be Reading each week.  Usually by the time I get home from work on Tuesdays, eat dinner, clean up, head upstairs and get on my laptop, it's too late to think about blogging.  But today's blizzard is a mixed blessing; work closed early, and now I'm home early enough (and with enough energy!) to participate.

Today's tease comes from a forthcoming book from Random House called The Tiger's Wife by debut novelist Tea Obreht, whom I got to meet recently at Winter Institute.  The book releases in early March and is getting lots of buzz, mostly because young Tea was recently named to The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list.  From the opening paragraph on p. 7:

"The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river.  The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past...and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. " 

NB: Usually when I do a Google Image search for a dust jacket image, it's the first thing that pops up in a search.  Not this time.  First several pages' worth were images of Tiger Woods's ex-wife. I guess it's a sad fact of life that so many more people care about her than about this wondrous new literary novel!