By GABRIELLE DANCHICK
Last updated: 11:53 am
July 25, 2008
Posted: 4:16 am
July 20, 2008
Galaxy Craze's exquisite new novel keeps you 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. That name, that knowingness - did the events of "Tiger, Tiger" really happen to her?
No matter. In Craze's deft hands, this tale of enlightenment gone wrong rings true, whether it is or not.
Young narrator May is a British girl whose parents, aging hippies, once traveled to meet the Maharaji. Now they're older, restless, and when dad heads out on a business trip to India, mom packs the two children for a visit to old friend Renee at a Los Angeles ashram.
It seems an innocuous place, run by the female guru Parvati. 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 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 vacation. 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. And who is this guru who seems so willing to accept the many gifts, sometimes too precious, her disciples offer? What at first glance appeared a peaceful respite begins to look more and more like a cult.
Craze's gorgeous prose is all in the incisive detail. 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; and two children fending for themselves in a strange and sometimes brutal world, where innocence can be lost over and over again.
Tiger, Tiger
by Galaxy Craze
Black Cat
