Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

One Day as a Tiger

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Cover artist
  
Jeremy Walker

Publication date
  
March 1997

ISBN
  
0-7011-6628-2

Author
  
Anne Haverty

Country
  
United Kingdom

2.6/5
Goodreads

Language
  
English

Media type
  
Print

Originally published
  
March 1997

Publisher
  
Chatto & Windus

One Day as a Tiger t3gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcSqy4xlDiXKaQBBp

Awards
  
Rooney Prize for Irish Literature

Award
  
Rooney Prize for Irish Literature

Similar
  
The Long Cosmos, The far side of a kiss, The beauty of the moon, Free and Easy - The, Ladies' Night at Finbar's

One Day as a Tiger is the first novel by Irish author Anne Haverty. Published in 1997 it was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award that year and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

Contents

Title

As explained in the preface to the book, the title comes from a Tibetan proverb:

Plot

After the death of his parents in a road accident as they travelled to visit him, Marty leaves his academic career at Trinity College, Dublin and returns to the family farm in County Tipperary, where he has an uncertain relationship with his brother Pierce, and becomes increasingly enfatuated by Etti, his sister-in-law. Marty also finds his heart moved my Missy, a genetically engineered sheep who refuses to associate with the rest of the flock and enjoys "music, porridge and laconic stories". Eventually Etti and Marty travel to France with Missy in order to ensure her future at the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals, but they only get as far as Deauville.

Reception

  • Kirkus Reviews is positive "Irish poet and screenwriter Haverty revisits the old theme of killing the thing you love. Her version comes in a spare, wry debut about a young man who willfully brings ruin upon himself and his brother." and concludes "The plot dances along at a brisk clip as Haverty's precise language beautifully captures her eccentric, isolated cast of rural characters in what's hardly a trail-blazing but nevertheless a promising first novel."
  • Colm Toibin was effusive "A novel written with enormous confidence and flair. It has a lightness and a sense of comic timing which is absent from most contemporary Irish fiction, but it also has a real sense of darkness and the grotesque"
  • Fiona Gray in the Mail on Sunday writes "It takes style, confidence and originality to pull of such an ostentatiously weird narrative, and Haverty displays all three. A crazily intelligent depiction of rural Ireland.'

    • References

    One Day as a Tiger Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA