Culture December 13, 2013

Some reasonable responses to sensing there’s a tiger in your house: calling the police, climbing out the window, realizing you’re probably imagining things and going back to sleep. Ruth Field, the elderly protagonist of Fiona McFarlane’s stunning debut novel, The Night Guest, does none of the above. Instead, she telephones her son in New Zealand (Ruth lives on a beach north of Sydney), gets out of bed, calls out in the night, and pictures the headlines that could soon convey news of her death: “Australian Woman Eaten by Tiger in Own House,” or, more salaciously, “Tiger Puts Pensioner on the