Name: Brian Gillis's review of The Tiger by John Vaillant
Item: The Tiger
Rating: 3
Author: Brian Gillis

John Vaillant

Documents the efforts of a tiger conservation leader who was forced to hunt a man-eating tiger through the brutal Siberian winter, an effort that familiarized him with the creature's history, motives and unique method of attack. 100,000 first printing.

A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

The Tiger

Brian Gillis

It's December 1997, and a man-eating Siberian tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random : the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again"--Jacket.

Patrick Book

Jeremy Anderberg

“No one would read [this book] if it were about a pig or a moose (or even a person) who attacked unemployed loggers. Tigers, on the other hand, get our full attention. They strike a deep and resonant chord within us.”

Vaillant’s superb narrative of a vengeful tiger in Siberia is among the most memorable writing and storytelling I’ve encountered in the time I’ve been writing this newsletter. If you didn’t know any better, you could get to the end of this book thinking you had just read a very realistic novel.

The Tiger opens with a blood-tingling scene: Vladimir Markov is walking home with his dog, through bone-chilling cold and knee-deep snow—at night no less. The reader senses something amiss . . . something dangerous lurking just off-stage. Before even having a chance to react, both Markov and the reader are ambushed by the fiercest predator that remains in our modern world.

The non-fiction books I love most are those that combine genres and deeply explore the context of the story being told. Just a couple examples: Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map explores early attempts at epidemiology, daily life in Victorian London, the history and future of cities; Robert Kurson’s Rocket Men looks at some of the history of spaceflight, why the US needed a win in 1968, the incredible feats of NASA engineering and problem solving. There’s plenty of digression, but I don’t consider that a bad thing when it’s all interesting and when it’s all incredibly well-written.

In The Tiger, John Vaillant tells the captivating biological story of the tiger itself—how it’s an animal that’s hardwired for ruthless killing. Tigers are the silent, sneaky assassins of the natural world. He also tells us about Siberia and what the hard life of a village in Eastern Russia is really like. And threading it all together: how a massive and angry tiger got personal and gruesome revenge on a poacher. Vaillant writes that, “It resembled something closer to a first-degree murder: premeditated, with malice aforethought, and a clear intent to kill.”

His composition is deceptively, simplistically descriptive, but also lyrical in what seems to be a very Russian way—as a reader, I was a bit awed by the spare beauty of the words, and also entranced by Vaillant’s ability to bluntly convey the subject matter. I loved this particular line, as just one example: “The impact of an attacking tiger can be compared to that of a piano falling on you from a second-story window. But unlike the piano, the tiger is designed to do this, and the impact is only the beginning.”

The Tiger is a great book. Period. I originally picked it up because it was recommending multiple times by you guys in the Best Read of 2020 discussion thread. Sure as heck didn’t disappoint.

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What I thought would be a gripping and suspenseful tale of a hunt for a man-eating tiger in the Siberian wilderness instead was a meandering stroll through Russian history, culture, politics, geography, and ecology. The book also expends significant word count towards detailing the personalities, motives, thoughts, yearnings, beliefs, and ancestry of the main characters, including the tiger. Ancillary to all of this was the actual hunt for the titular tiger.

The book is based on a true story about a tiger that killed 3 hunters in the 1990s and the consequent hunt for the tiger took place. This story line could have been told in ample detail in probably a third of the total page count of this book. The author‚Äôs digressions into all of the other topics, while at times interesting, left me feeling like I was reading a book with a multiple personality disorder that couldn‚Äôt decide what it was really about. 

While the writing itself was good, the constant deviations from the main topic dragged the pace of the story to a crawl. The other topics felt like they were added chiefly to fluff a slim volume out into a book-length manuscript rather than to enhance and build on the main story line. This story would have been much better suited as a feature article in a magazine or as part of an anthology with the fluff cut out.

I.m. ruzz

very good book. quite a few tangents but i enjoy tangents. if you liked guns, germs & steel you'll probably like this.

Francine Corry

It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote Russian village. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again. As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region. Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.

Christopher McCabe

Jayme Cochrane

Satyajeet Pal

Rory O'K

Morgan Holland

In December 1997, a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta.

Brian Gillis &
The Tiger by John Vaillant

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Brian Gillis &The Tiger by John Vaillant

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Brian Gillis &
The Tiger by John Vaillant