The White Bone [Paperback]

The world that Barbara Gowdy has imagined in this book is not one that leaps merely from her imagination - a look at her acknowledgements at the end of the novel will reveal this. She has definitely done her homework, and her work here has its roots in science and reality - which makes the scope of her creation all the more amazing. She has brought to life not just the surface of the elephants' lives - she has envisioned and made very real the structures of their society, their thought processes, the various methods with which they communicate (both with each other and with members of other species), and even a vast system of mythology, embodying legends, 'links' (omens, signs and folk wisdom), a vast knowledge of their natural world, and even the concept of a creative deity. This might sound like quite a feat for the author to pull off - and it is, but she does so with breathtaking success.

The society of elephants is a matriarchal one - the females are the leaders and seem to be more plentiful. The central character of the story - a young cow named Mud - is seen to go through the changes that life brings about to all species. She is born, orphaned, adopted by another family group, and grows into adolescence and adulthood over the course of the story. Her understanding and concept of the world around her grows and changes as her life progresses and takes shape - altered both physically and emotionally by her experiences. She is a visionary - an elephant within the family group who is sometimes gifted with visions of occurrences in other places and times. These events sometimes lie in the near or far future, sometimes in the present, and sometimes in the past. There is also (usually) present within each family group a member gifted with 'mind talking' - able to communicate without sound with the other group members and with other species. When a mind talker or a visionary - or a fine-scenter or a tracker, or other specifically talented member - dies or is killed, the gift is passed on to another individual.

The story is not, as at least one other reviewer has indicated, plotless. It involves the elephants' constant struggle for survival in a world where 'hindleggers' (humans) are continuously a threat, slaughtering them mercilessly and in whatever numbers they can manage. Their treatment is brutal - if you think that elephants in a circus are treated without respect, imagine them being hunted by jeeps and helicopters and slaughtered in the wild - with absolutely no discrimination as to age and size - and then cut apart by chain saws and axes, often before they are dead, in order to 'harvest' their tusks, tails, feet and sometimes heads. It's gruesome and horrifying - but it happens.

Gowdy's story brings this horrific treatment to life for the reader - but she also gives us a moving portrait of some of the most gentle, non-aggressive creatures on the planet. Individuals are imbued with a distinct personality - it's as easy to get to know them as human characters in other well-crafted fiction. The above-mentioned empathy that the novel invokes is, again, the key here. I was drawn into this book almost immediately when I started reading it - I was afraid at first that the name structure would be a high hurdle, but the vivid personality differences (and the appropriately given names) aided greatly in clearing it. This book wound up being one of the most moving experiences I've had with fiction in quite some time - there's a lot of sorrow and sadness here, but there is an amazing beauty to be found as well as joy and hope.