Much of the book The Night Tiger by Yangsee Choo takes place on the border between the real world and the world of the dead. The real world is 1931 Malaya (what Malaysia was called in colonial times). The world of the dead, or more specifically the transition place between the living and the dead, has tall grass, lots of water, and a train to carry the newly departed across.
The two main characters are Ren and Ji Lin. Ren is 11 and works as a houseboy for an elderly and eccentric doctor. He has no family since the death of his twin brother Yi three years earlier. Ji Lin is 20, and she had been a top student until her stepfather decided not to pay for any further education. She wants more from her life than being a dressmaker’s apprentice or marriage to a man she doesn’t love. Ji Lin also wants to know where she stands with her stepbrother, Shin. They had been close as children but drifted apart as they grew up.
In his last days Ren’s employer, Dr. MacFarlane, makes him promise to retrieve his missing finger and return it to his grave before the 49 day period where the spirit roams after death. Ren agrees, unsure if Dr. MacFarlane is even still coherent, or if it’s the malaria talking. After all he’s been confessing to be a weretiger and attacking animals and people. Ren’s not sure if he believes in such things. What he does believe in is his “cat sense,” a sort of intuition that had been much stronger before his brother’s death.
Ji Lin wants to be a teacher or a nurse, anything to get the independence that she craves. In addition to her apprenticeship, she works part-time as a hostess in a dance hall to pay off her mother’s gambling debt. Ji Lin keeps her part-time job a secret, her family would not approve of her dancing with strange men. One of these men leaves behind an unusual item: a mummified finger. Ji Lin enlists Shin to return the finger to him, but soon finds it impossible for he has died suddenly.
Ren makes his way to the home of a colleague of Dr. MacFarlane named William Acton. William Acton is another doctor, who was supposed to possess the finger. Ren has a letter of recommendation and is hired by Dr. Acton. Ren is a bright and capable boy and this is recognized by his new household. In between chores, he searches for the finger. It isn’t there and time is running out.
Ji Lin doesn’t hold to superstitions, but ever since she found the finger things have felt off. She’s also begun to have strange dreams about a train rising out of the water and a little boy that she feels like she knows from somewhere, but knows she’s never met. Ren dreams of him, too. It is his brother Yi, waiting just over the border between the living and the dead for his brother to join him. Yi warns Ji Lin to beware of someone but can’t name them. She thinks that she knows who it is.
William Acton left England fleeing scandal. He has a taste for alcohol and an eye for the local women. Sometimes he pays for their attentions. When one of these women dies, seemingly killed by a tiger who up until this time has only claimed pets, he feels that his strange luck is acting up again. People have a way of dying around him, especially if they are somehow inconvenient. Dr. Acton soon learns that some monsters are real, especially when in an unexpected form. Ji Lin learns the same lesson.
Ren and Ji Lin bond instantly when they meet and naturally help each other. They are both seeking something just out of reach and continue to do so even after the main part of the story has ended.
The descriptions in the book are so immersive, from the sunshine, to the rain, to the plants, and even the dust on the road. Especially the food. There is so much food, from the omelets Ren makes, to roadside noodles, and mouthwatering treats covered with coconut. I wanted to eat all of them.
I don’t know much about mythologies in Asia, and the author has added notes in the back of the book to help readers in the same situation. “Weretiger” is not what the spirit is normally called, but does evoke a sense of what it is to the reader. The Confucian virtues also have a big part to play in the story, as each virtue corresponds to a character in the story. There are also historical notes about the locations and notes about Chinese words and numbers. The Night Tiger has a lot of depth to explore.
Have you read The Night Tiger? What did you think?
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