โ Scribed by Kim Echlin
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Elephant Winter is full of hushed wonders and harsher realities. When 30-year-old Sophie Walker returns to Canada to be with her dying mother, she thinks her stay will be temporary. While the two "settle into the daily business of waiting," she is drawn to her unlikely neighbors, the keeper of the Ontario Safari and his five elephants. Soon enough, in fact, Sophie falls for both Jo and his charges, and decides to record and explore elephant language and mores. Even in captivity, Sophie finds, these creatures strive for the greatest happiness and good for all, a far cry from the individualism of humans.
One visitor in particular is an almost allegorical representation of self-interest at any cost, and Jo seems incapable of banishing him. That would be Alecto Ryle. This unwelcome guest turns out to have made his reputation on sadistic experiments and autopsy reports, not to mention the massacres that enabled them--and now he's hanging around the Safari, waiting for one or more of the animals to die.
In her first novel, Kim Echlin can occasionally be expository, particularly in Sophie's five-part Elephant-English Dictionary. This is a very different beast from the glossary Barbara Gowdy created for The White Bone , but it also has its beauties. Describing one salute, Sophie admits that most keepers "hold in disdain people who romanticize elephants, but I have seen my elephants singing this evening song into the grey Ontario winter twilight. Their bodies appear to soften and shift like clouds on the rocky fields." Though Elephant Winter 's human factor is itself gripping, Echlin's evocation of the intimate rapport between her heroine and the creatures she inherits can be sublime. After the matriarch, Kezia, loses her baby, she unshackles herself and escapes.
Through the darkness I finally saw her body, swaying down the road where horse farms and vegetable farms were strung like beads through the fields. She walked slowly and alone on that dark country road as if she were memorizing something. Drops of milk hung frozen from her breast.
Terrified that Kezia will panic, Sophie realizes that the best thing to do is let her take charge, and puts her arm out: "After an infinite five seconds, she reached out, hooked her trunk around my arm, slowly turned and began to lead me home." Readers not intrigued by elephants or by the possibility of deep communication will not be taken by this lyrical novel--but are there such people? --Kerry Fried
The appealing protagonist of this engaging first novel (published in 1997 by Viking in Canada) learns the language of elephants, creating a dictionary of elephant speech to support her theory that elephants communicate not unlike humans, expressing happiness, grief, anger, joy, contentment and melancholy. Sophie Walker is 30 when she returns home to southern Ontario from Zimbabwe to care for her dying mother, a wildlife painter whose unconventional life has inspired Sophie to pursue her own career as a world-traveling art teacher. Challenged by a harsh Canadian winter and the daunting role of caregiver, Sophie responds eagerly to the attentions of rough-hewn Jo Mann, the elephant keeper at a neighboring tourist park, and signs on as barn hand. They fall in love, and soon Sophie discovers she's pregnant. Enter Alecto Rikes, a sinister animal physiologist, whose academic ambitions eclipse his humane instincts, and who seeks to perform an elephant autopsy at any cost. When a male pachyderm turns violent, Alecto kills him, saving Jo's life but breaking his spirit. Seriously wounded, he leaves Sophie to deal with her mother's death and the impending birth of their child. In a poignant twist, a grieving female elephant is the only source of emotional support for Sophie. Echlin's solid devotion to detail makes for an original and engrossing narrative. In prose both eloquent and controlled, she fearlessly links the often anguished sanctity of the mother/daughter bond with the spiritual affinity humans can feel for animals. (Apr.) FYI: Echlin completed her doctoral thesis on Ojibway storytelling. She has lived and traveled in France, the Marshall Islands, China and Zimbabwe. Currently, she resides in Toronto, where she has produced TV documentaries for the CBC.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
EDITORIAL REVIEW: Summoned home from Zimbabwe, Sophie Walker has returned to southern Ontario to nurse her dying mother. Her mother's farm borders on a tacky tourist spot called "Safari," and across from the kitchen window Sophie sees a herd of the immense Asian elephants playing in the snow. W
Sophie Walker has no choice but to leave Zimbabwe and return home to southern Ontario when she learns that her mother is dying. While her mother, an ardent wildlife painter, strives bravely against cancer's odds to retain a creative hold on her diminishing vitality, Sophie herself contemplates with
EDITORIAL REVIEW: Summoned home from Zimbabwe, Sophie Walker has returned to southern Ontario to nurse her dying mother. Her mother's farm borders on a tacky tourist spot called "Safari," and across from the kitchen window Sophie sees a herd of the immense Asian elephants playing in the snow. W
When a romance between two zoo keepers goes sour, the woman turns to an elephant for sisterly support. Sophie Walker of Ontario is able to do this because while in Africa she learned their language.
Sophie Walker has no choice but to leave Zimbabwe and return home to southern Ontario when she learns that her mother is dying. While her mother, an ardent wildlife painter, strives bravely against cancer's odds to retain a creative hold on her diminishing vitality, Sophie herself contemplates with
When a romance between two zoo keepers goes sour, the woman turns to an elephant for sisterly support. Sophie Walker of Ontario is able to do this because while in Africa she learned their language.