LITERARY FICTION

TIGER

(Quercus £14.99, 432 pp) THE poet-turned-novelist Polly Clark’s acclaimed debut, Larchfield, drew inspiration from the life of W. H. Auden. Here, she’s mined her own stint as a zookeeper for material.

A visceral novel in four somewhat uneven parts, Tiger begins with Frieda, a morphine-addicted researcher who prefers bonobos to big cats.

Having been sacked and packed off to a zoo in Devon, hot mess Frieda finds herself in yet more hot water, and with the arrival of a one-eyed tigress the simmering plot threatens to boil over.

But then we’re whisked off to the frozen forests of Siberia, where conservationist Tomas also has tiger trouble — though his biggest headache is his charismatic, controlling dad.

Clark’s exotic and at times bemusingly off-target imagery initially threatens to get the better of her, while the novel’s broad-brush latter sections are on the functional side.

But it all comes together in the end, in what is ultimately an impassioned celebration of second chances.