Chris Flynn (2)

"I possess a remarkable memory, Palaeo, though I will admit to the occasional romanticism of the narrative."

What a charming read! Awaiting sale at an auction of antiquities, a 13,000-year-old mammoth skeleton tells the story of his life to his motley crew of companions: a haughty Bavarian pterodactyl, a ghetto tyrannosar, a super-laidback archaic penguin, and a vengeful Ancient Egyptian Queen. It is a story of the old times, of the impact of first humans to arrive in the paradisal Americas show more many thousands of years ago, as well as a unique vantage point on human history, as the mammoth witnesses the arguable progress of modern humanity.

Sweet, funny, and captivating, Mammoth made me really rather happy. It is also a book in the eco-warrior vein, with an appeal to those of us wondering when - or if - humankind will realise we are part of something larger than ourselves. show less

3.75
Want to know what an airplane seat thinks? Or what it’s like to be an genetically engineered Aussie platypus that has a penchant for creating art and saving German tourists from crocs? Then this is for you.
Really weird but interesting but also a little gory (some stories)
I liked all except the last story which I couldn’t read because of how it was written.
The Aussie platypodes was my fave story.

Mammoth by Australian author Chris Flynn is like nothing I've ever read before, or likely to read again for that matter. Our narrator is a 13,000 year old extinct mammoth by the name of Mammut. It does sound crazy, but it also strangely works. The reader learns that as the bones or fossils of an animal (extinct or not) are unearthed, their consciousness returns to them and they can communicate.

Yep, you heard me right, this book has a cast of talking fossils. They talk amongst themselves by show more telepathy as they listen to Mammut's story of his life on earth and subsequent revival after his bones were discovered, dug up and sold.

I enjoyed the easy dialogue between the different creatures and their accents based on when and where they were unearthed and the humans they could listen in on. And boy did they have some things to say about we hominids.

What I didn't enjoy was the lack of punctuation for any of this dialogue. I was chatting with another booklover about this very thing last week, and it's an incredibly hard feat to pull off dialogue without punctuation. Unfortunately it slowed me down here and I frequently had to backtrack to find out who was speaking.

I enjoyed the majority of Mammut's story, however some parts of his story were too detailed and failed to hold my interest while others had me entranced. I wanted to learn more about the other fossils in the conversation, however I recognise the book wouldn't have been called Mammoth if that were the case.

Originality is hard to come by these days, and I take my hat off to Australian author Chris Flynn, because he's certainly achieved it here.

* Copy courtesy of University of Queensland Press * show less

Mammoth does what great literature should. It causes readers to pause and consider important issues in ways they had not previously.

I was aware of the controversy surrounding the auctioning of various fossil artefacts in the US, particularly T. bataar specimens illegally extracted from Mongolia, having read journalist Paige Williams’ fascinating book The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, betrayal and the quest for earth’s ultimate trophy. But Chris Flynn’s novel’s scope and ambition is show more much broader, and his highly original approach to considering the lessons of history, far more impactful.

The bulk of the narrative is delivered from the sage perspective of Mammut, an extinct woolly mammoth. One instinctively feels for the plight of this character, both his and his species’ original demise and his more recent fossilized consciousness. Continue reading >> https://www.bookloverbookreviews.com/2020/05/mammoth-by-chris-flynn-fresh-perspe... show less