The White Bone

I could only grab bits and pieces of time to read this book, a couple pages at a time. This wasn't a problem, other than confusing Hail Stones and Tall Time; the book was intensely intriguing yet not so compelling that I couldn't put it down.
After a while I began to wonder how it would be to look at this book as science fiction. The creation of a coherent culture is the basis of good scifi. But would The White Bone have the same poignancy, the same heartbreak, if we didn't relate to the She-ones as a lifeform we know in our hearts is being harmed by humans?
2011 review

"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 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 show more 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. show less

I have never read anything like this novel. It’s a journey through drought, starvation, birth and death, poaching through the eyes of an elephant calf named mud. We are in muds head and I found it absolutely fascinating.

I don't normally like books with animal protagonists, but this is masterfully done. Gowdy avoids anthropomorphization and sentimentality and creates an entirely believable world as seen from the pov of elephants. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

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."

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 is definitely mention of tasting urine and dangling penises.

Told mainly from the perspective of a single family of elephants. This was depressing and awesome. Lots of very interesting and beautiful material on memory. Far and away the best Gowdy I've read.