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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."… (més)
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 us readers that much....... ( )
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." ( )
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. ( )
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 und spannend zugleich. Ein faszinierendes Buch - nicht nur für Elefantenfreunde!
... 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.
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Yet in the alert, warm animal there lies the pain and burden of an enormous sadness. For it too feels the presence of what often overwhelms us: a memory, as if the element we keep pressing toward was once more intimate, more true, and our communion infinitely tender.--from The Eighth Elegy, Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell
Dedicatòria
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For Chris Kirkwood and Rob Kirkwood and in memory of my father, Robert Gowdy
Primeres paraules
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If they live long enough they forget everything. (prologue)
All day there are glaring omens that go undetected. (Chapter 1)
Citacions
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Thirty years of aligning his every move to what he believed was a world trembling with mystic revelation (p. 145)
The earth tilts to meet their footfalls (p. 216)
At the end of a long life you forget everything except who you are. But who is that? ...Now her hunch is that you are the sum of those incidents only you can testify to, whose existence, without you, would have no earthly acknowledgement. (271)
By what misguided arrangement were she-ones made swollen with memory rather than sleek with appetite? (p 320)
Darreres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
If you look back, as Mud keeps doing, you can see the dust raised by their passage rolling out as far as the horizon, and the entire plain washed in light.
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."