Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Picador (2000), Edition: First, 352 pages
Description
A thrilling journey into the minds of African elephants as they struggle to survive. If, as many recent nonfiction bestsellers have revealed, animals possess emotions and awareness, they must also have stories. In The White Bone, a novel imagined entirely from the perspective of African elephants, Barbara Gowdy creates a world whole and separate that yet illuminates our own. For years, young Mud and her family have roamed the high grasses, swamps, and deserts of the sub-Sahara. Now the earth is scorched by drought, and the mutilated bodies of family and friends lie scattered on the ground, shot down by ivory hunters. Nothing-not the once familiar terrain, or the age-old rhythms of life, or even memory itself-seems reliable anymore. Yet a slim prophecy of hope is passed on from water hole to water hole: the sacred white bone of legend will point the elephants toward the Safe Place. And so begins a quest through Africa's vast and perilous plains-until at last the survivors face a decisive trial of loyalty and courage. In The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy performs a feat of imagination virtually unparalleled in modern fiction. Plunged into an alien landscape, we orient ourselves in elephant time, elephant space, elephant consciousness and begin to feel, as Gowdy puts it, "what it would be like to be that big and gentle, to be that imperiled, and to have that prodigious memory."… (more)
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Media reviews
Barbara Gowdys Roman überzeugt durch gute Recherche und die phantasievolle Ausgestaltung des Zusammenlebens afrikanischer Elefanten. Man wird unweigerlich in die sonderbare Welt der Dickhäuter versetzt und erfährt zugleich mehr über seine eigene Welt. Die Geschichte ist traurig, ungewöhnlich
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und spannend zugleich. Ein faszinierendes Buch - nicht nur für Elefantenfreunde! Show Less
... Gowdy has created a landscape, a cosmology, and a community that are wholly surprising and believable. The White Bone is a singular and remarkable novel.
Times Literary Supplement
The novel is a tour de force.
Chicago Tribune
The White Bone is a spectacular achievement.
The Globe and Mail
Comic, apocalyptic, faintly hopeful, The White Bone succeeds as a brave and captivating act of imagination.
User reviews
LibraryThing member John
"If you live long enough, your memory leaks right out of you", thinks one of the elephants in this novel, and this is one of its themes: the power and the mystery of memory. One of the elephants asks what does it matter because, "sooner or later you forget everything anyway", to which the response
This is part of the charm of the novel...an intelligent, well constructed world of elephants through which Gowdy explores a range of emotions: hope, fear, terror, ecstacy, belief in the here-after, and in a garden of Eden here on earth where food and water are plentiful and no hindleggers (humans) run amok and kill for ivory or for the sheer joy of it. Some of the elephants, a select few, can read the minds of other animals and communicate with them in this way.
It took me a little while to get into the book, partly because I didn't have the time to just sit down and get well-started on it, but once I did, I found that I enjoyed it, and that the elephants took on personalities every bit as real as other fictional characters. Tall Time is a fine character: the Link Bull who understands all the omens and signs that govern the path of life (although even he begins to question the completeness of his wisdom in trying to deal with the effects of a terrible drought and instantaneous and inexplicable death from humans. It is hard not to feel a twinge for this character when, after he has said farewell to a dying grand bull and is feeling rejuvenated and determined to find his scattered family, is hunted down at night in a cone of light from a helicopter: "The shots that pelt his hide feel as light as rain. It is bewildering to be brought down under their little weight".
The novel also follows the searches of the She-Ss who survive a slaughter by humans, but who then wander the parched land looking for a young, lost member, and the White Bone that is said to show the way to the promised land of peace and plenty and safety from humans.
Gowdy clearly did a lot of research on the behaviour of elephants: their dung-eating habits are particularly interesting! But she has done a great job of constructing a believeable society of interesting individuals faced with great challenges in a very fundamental struggle for survival.
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is: "Not who you are. Who you are is the one thing you can't forget. It is all you have to take into the here-after, and if you don't have it, you eventually crumble and become the silt at the bottom of the The Eternal Shoreless Water." This is part of the charm of the novel...an intelligent, well constructed world of elephants through which Gowdy explores a range of emotions: hope, fear, terror, ecstacy, belief in the here-after, and in a garden of Eden here on earth where food and water are plentiful and no hindleggers (humans) run amok and kill for ivory or for the sheer joy of it. Some of the elephants, a select few, can read the minds of other animals and communicate with them in this way.
It took me a little while to get into the book, partly because I didn't have the time to just sit down and get well-started on it, but once I did, I found that I enjoyed it, and that the elephants took on personalities every bit as real as other fictional characters. Tall Time is a fine character: the Link Bull who understands all the omens and signs that govern the path of life (although even he begins to question the completeness of his wisdom in trying to deal with the effects of a terrible drought and instantaneous and inexplicable death from humans. It is hard not to feel a twinge for this character when, after he has said farewell to a dying grand bull and is feeling rejuvenated and determined to find his scattered family, is hunted down at night in a cone of light from a helicopter: "The shots that pelt his hide feel as light as rain. It is bewildering to be brought down under their little weight".
The novel also follows the searches of the She-Ss who survive a slaughter by humans, but who then wander the parched land looking for a young, lost member, and the White Bone that is said to show the way to the promised land of peace and plenty and safety from humans.
Gowdy clearly did a lot of research on the behaviour of elephants: their dung-eating habits are particularly interesting! But she has done a great job of constructing a believeable society of interesting individuals faced with great challenges in a very fundamental struggle for survival.
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LibraryThing member corgidog2
African elephants fight for survival against nature and man-told from the point of view of the elephants. (Sounds corny but it works.)
LibraryThing member kellyoyo
Though it was worth reading, The White Bone is proof that lit writers shouldn't mess with speculative fiction unless they do a little homework first.
Everything was perfect about this book except one thing: the speculative aspect. It was fascinating to be in the elephants' world, but I thought the
Everything was perfect about this book except one thing: the speculative aspect. It was fascinating to be in the elephants' world, but I thought the
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portrayal of individual personalities and relationships between the elephants was weak and fell back on human tropes and stereotypes. This was especially true in the portrayal of romantic longing between male and female elephants. It just didn't ring true. Show Less
LibraryThing member bhagerty
I love Gowdy's writing, but this novel requires more effort than I was willing to expend. After trying twice to get started, I gave up.
LibraryThing member mgaulding
One of my favorite books ever.
LibraryThing member omnia_mutantur
The premise is more interesting than I make it sound when i try to explain it, but it's about elephants as sentient and as individuals, but not in any sort of anthropomorphic way. It's sad and it's disjointed and it's full of death and failure, and i read most of it in airports and on a plane.
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There's a short glossary in the beginning of words that elephants use, like 'flow stick' for snake, and there's a genealogical chart showing inter-relationships. The book teeters on the edge of gimmicky without ever really falling over, but also without definitely avoiding it either. Show Less
LibraryThing member cloudshipsinger
Like Watership Down, but for elephants. Amazing world building, with some light fantastical elements that don't feel out of place.
This one is probably even less anthropomorphic, though, and more realistic to how elephants actually think and live. And boy, does it really go into the biology...there
This one is probably even less anthropomorphic, though, and more realistic to how elephants actually think and live. And boy, does it really go into the biology...there
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is definitely mention of tasting urine and dangling penises. Show Less
LibraryThing member LibraryCin
I can't do a "real" review, because it's been too long since I read it, but I wanted to write something. This is a work of fiction that is told from an elephant’s point of view, as it follows African elephant, Mud, and her family as they navigate perils that befall elephants, including drought
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and poaching, while they try to find someplace safe. Show Less
LibraryThing member DonnaMarieMerritt
Beautiful language. The idea of people hunting elephants is appalling. After reading this book, I trust everyone will find it even more horrifying. Imaginative. Brilliant. Lovely.
LibraryThing member LynnB
The book was very imaginative and obviously well-researched. However, I couldn't relate to the characters and had trouble even remembering who was who. The best part was the writing about memory: "If you live long enough, your memory leaks right out of you."
LibraryThing member JBarringer
really depressing book about the evil poaching of wild African elephants during a drought, from the elephants' perspective.
LibraryThing member 37143Birnbaum
The story, overall, was very sad. I kept hoping that all the anguish of sticking with the reading of the book would be rewarded at the end by some happiness, but the author was very stingy and kept it all to herself. I was very disappointed. There is no climax, no conclusion. She could have given
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us readers that much....... Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2000)
Governor General's Literary Award (Finalist — 1998)
Scotiabank Giller Prize (Longlist — 1998)
Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (Shortlist — 1998)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1998-08-06
Physical description
8.25 inches
ISBN
9780312264123