The Only Harmless Great Thing

This is above all a story about stories.

I know that sounds cliche but I promise you, this isn't a cliche. This is a novella about how stories are told, remembered and how they're used to create history, to create narratives and feelings and futures. And the story-tellers here aren't human but elephants who, perhaps, are one of the few other mammals we know of that have stories the way we understand stories.

Elephants are poignant symbols of how human greed and violence has destroyed so much of the world; we know now that elephants have long memories, cultural memories, and they transfer these memories to their children and grandchildren and so on. They are animals with history, just like us, and humans have fractured the history of show more elephants as violently as we have fractured our own history.

And that context makes this novella so very powerful. Because Regan and Topsy are both victims of a shattered narrative, a fractured history, a calyx of pain and death and suffering but at the same time they are also blossoms, blooms--violent and angry and powerful even when they are forced to walk together into death. They change the narrative. They fracture the fracture and in so doing make something new, something broken but brave and immense and memorable.

This story isn't so much about its characters but that's the point. The characters themselves know that they aren't the point. The story is the point. And Bolander gets that point across so perfectly and painfully that it never feels like gratuitous suffering or hurt for hurt's sake or shock just for shock value.

It feels like righteousness. Like power. Like the lightning at the heart of all stories, the lightning that laces narrative to past and present and future. show less

No matter what you did, forty or fifty or a hundred years passed and everything became a narrative to be toyed with, masters of media alchemy splitting the truth's nucleus into a ricocheting cascade reaction of diverging alternate realities.

The premise of this book sounds wacky if you try to explain it to someone: in an alternate reality where elephants are sentient, they are hired to replace the Radium Girls after it comes out how dangerous it is to work in the factories. The book alternates between elephant myths, a former Radium Girl hired to train them, and a researcher in the future, negotiating with the sovereign elephant tribes. But Bolander makes it work, and how. It packs a lot into its short length; it's about history, and show more labor, and our treatment of animals, and even Disneyfication. Sometime when I read contemporary short science fiction and fantasy, I complain that I want more science fiction specifically, and sometimes I complain that when there is sf, I want the sf elements to be more than props, and this story gave me exactly what I wanted on both accounts. show less

The Only Harmless Great Thing: Prepare yourself for anger and depression.

It is a fine novella you created here, Brooke Bolander. I golf clap in honor of your book and simultaneously accept your apologies for making my soul cry bloody snot tears of angry sad mad.

Not for the weak of heart! Serious.
In this alt-history novella, the horrifically sad history of Topsy the Elephant (electrocuted for entertainment and ticket sales) is merged with the history of the Radium Girls. In this reweaving, the women poisoned by radium in watch factories of the early 20th century have begun replacing their cancer ridden work force with trained elephants. These enslaved Elephants can taste the poison they are ingesting and do what is possible to avoid the show more whip.

Mixed throughout the novella are vignettes of Elephant history, passed down pack stories, and lore. Along side those are a loose plotline of Humans negotiating with modern Elephants to be pushed to poisoned reservation lands. These lands are offered as penance for past Human crimes, but are a different kind of poison. Humans continue to be fucking assholes. show less

Oh, humanity, SHAME ON YOU.

This is a shamefest of shameful shenanigans, from Radium Girls to massive mistreatment of elephants...

But unlike us and our own grasp of history, THEY WILL REMEMBER. :)

I've read a few of Bolander's stories and they all struck me as hardcore. In the sense that they hit hard and make you feel it in your gut and gonads, barely letting up long enough to go for another sucker punch.

Let's face it. We don't look at the crap we do to ourselves very well. Narrative restructuring for our lives has made it almost impossible to see the truth for what it is. So let's write more stories that SHAME us for the immortal monsters that we're becoming, shall we? Break through that immense narrative wall.

Ah... but... and here's show more the really shameful bit... people don't want to hear how bad they're being. Pointing fingers is what they do best, but those fingers never land on ourselves.

I think this novella works best for those of us willing to take our share of the blame. Or at least get angry enough to start pointing a few extra fingers at some random folk and hope it sticks. :)

Is the story fun, otherwise? Sure! Pretty awesome text that's like poetry and being inside an elephant's head. :) Oh, wait... :) show less

Brooke Bolander's The Only Harmless Great Thing is an alternate history, taking as its inspiration the case of the Radium Girls and Thomas Edison's film Electrocuting an Elephant about Topsy, a condemned elephant Edison had electrocuted at Coney Island as part of his propaganda war with Nikola Tesla. In this alternate history, U.S. Radium enlists elephants to replace the workers suffering from radiation poisoning on the factory floor on the belief that their larger size will forestall their radiation exposure and eventual death. The elephants, fully sentient with their own mythology and ability to use a form of sign language, work and live as slaves with broken spirits. Regan, a woman dying of radiation poisoning, befriends Topsy, an show more elephant she's training to replace her, and the two seek a way to fight back.
Bolander's story examines the nature of humanity's place in the world and the damage we leave in our wake. Further, she encourages the reader to consider non-human animals' emotions, a quality now understood to be common to most animals. Her discussion of radiation, industry, and war forces the reader to reconcile the promise of progress with the scars we leave on the natural landscape. Bolander's work is an amazing piece of speculative fiction and rightfully belongs under the Tor imprint alongside works by Philip K. Dick, Nnedi Okorafor, Douglas Preston. show less

I was really annoyed by this book in the beginning. It's set in a world related to our world and history, but different in a few key ways, and told with shifting perspectives and time periods that obscures for quite a while what those differences are -- and what the rules and conventions of this world are. I'm sure that this was a deliberate choice by Bolander, but it didn't work for me. Had this not been a little novella with a promise that all would have to be made clear fairly soon, I might have given it up.

Personally, I think giving up these tricks would have forced Bolander to tell a stronger story. The elements she's chosen to shape her story around are so fascinating -- the radium girls, the sentience and capacity for memory in show more elephants, the fight between direct and alternating current, and the electrocution of animals as a spectacle in that fight. But then there is an entire additional layer of long-term nuclear waste storage -- and that element in particular never seemed to serve the story for me -- it added too much confusion and did it ever even get resolved? I wish it had been cut.

This is a lot of complaining for a four-star review.

That's how much I liked the voice given to the radium girls. The voice given to animals who continue to be thought of as things even after they've been taught language. The simmering rage that finds power out of what seems like powerlessness. The criticism of a soulless capitalism that will continue to grind the powerless under its boot as long as there is a profit to be made.

A remarkable little book. show less

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook from the library.

Thoughts: I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. It combines some intriguing elements from history into an alternate history that is witty, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

A woman works at a radium plant even after the settlement, knowing it is killing her. She needs the money, and her new job is a unique one; she is teaching sentient elephants how to do the painting of the face clocks that used to be done by girls. Meanwhile, in the future humans are trying to bargain with the elephants, the very descendants of the elephants that were used so horribly.

This is a combined retelling of the elephant show more electrocution that happened on Coney Island and the Radium girls that died working in radium plants; both true historical events that are combined in this crazy world with sentient elephants that have a rich mythology. It is a different story and a bit odd; I am not sure I fully understood everything that happened. However, I will keep thinking about it for a long time and really enjoyed my time reading it.

The characters from the girl to the elephants are incredibly well done and easy to engage with. The bouncing back and forth between past and present was a bit confusing at first but beautifully done. The story feels somewhat unfinished, but somehow that feels right for this story. The dialogue is highly entertaining and witty. Bad things happen here, but they are strangely full of heart. The story seemed to have a lot of contradictions and does a wonderful job of drawing parallels to issues we are fighting against still today (workers rights, animal conservation, etc). This very short novella packs a lot of punch and story into a small space which takes a lot of skill and is something I always enjoy.

I listened to this on audiobook, and the audiobook was very well done. I really enjoyed the narration. I would definitely recommend listening to this on audiobook if you enjoy audiobooks.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed this. I was pleasantly surprised at how complex, witty, and entertaining this short novella was. I will definitely check out more of Bolander's stories. It takes a lot of skill to pack such a thought-provoking, witty, and entertaining story into such a small page space. I loved how Bolander combines some historical elements and reimagines them with elements of the fantastic. show less