The White Bone: A Novel

by Barbara Gowdy

Overview

"A brilliantly inspired melding of research into the lives of African elephants and the creation of a distinctly original . . . alternative world." —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
In The White Bone, a novel imagined entirely from the perspective of African elephants, Barbara Gowdy creates a world whole and separate that 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 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."
"An astonishingly moving saga." —Kirkus Reviews
"Gowdy renders this arid African landscape with a subtle gorgeousness reminiscent of Isak Dinesen." —The Boston Globe
"Gowdy here performs her greatest creative feat yet." —Entertainment Weekly
"Gowdy [has a] great gift for sensual description." —Sarah Boxer, The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466829596
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	351
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Barbara Gowdy is the author of five previous books, including Mister Sandman and We So Seldom Look On Love, and she has twice been a finalist for both the Governor General's Award and the Giller Prize. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Reading Group Guide

About this Guide

The following author biography and list of questions about The White Bone are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach The White Bone.

Editorial Reviews

From the enormously gifted Gowdy (Mister Sandman, 1997, etc.), a mesmerizing journey into the heart of Africa and a maternal society of elephants slipping rapidly into extinction. Africa's elephants are being decimated by an unending drought and slaughtered in unprecedented numbers for their tusks and feet. Young Mud, adopted into the She-S matriarchal group after they found her nearly crushed beneath her dead mother (and named for the life-saving circumstances of her birth), is now just old enough to carry her first calf. But this ordinarily joyous occasion in an elephant's life is destined to be otherwise when the She-S band, taking refuge in a swamp, is surprised by poachers and within a few moments nearly obliterated. The few survivors scatter in fear, then attempt to find each other while also seeking the White Bone, a mystical object that, according to elephant legend, will lead the finder to the Safe Place where drought and hunters cannot enter. Separated from her lifelong friend, Date Bed, who's able to communicate telepathically with all creatures except humans, Mud searches for her with a few others, including Date Bed's mother. Meanwhile, Tall Time, father of Mud's calf, is on a lonely quest of his own for the White Bone—a quest that takes him to the land of the Lost Ones, distantly related elephants who have evolved into smaller, mountain-dwelling visionaries. Though the White Bone is eventually found, death continues to claim those seeking it, and in the end nearly everything depends on the ability of Mud and her newborn calf merely to survive. Warmly conveying a remarkably full vision of elephant life, as well as the almost incomprehensible tragedy of speciesannihilation, Gowdy has created an astonishingly moving saga. (First printing of 50,000; Book-of-the-Month-Club selection; author tour) .

Kirkus Reviews

Barbara Gowdy's The White Bone (1998), a kind of tragic epic of African elephants narrated from the perspective of the elephants, undertakes to cross the boundary between species in an extraordinarily visceral, sensuous, and poetic rendering of language unparalleled in contemporary literature. You need not believe that elephants can think in language-in this case, a highly lyric English-to be enthralled by the author's imaginative immersion in her subject, a brilliantly inspired melding of research into the lives of African elephants and the creation of a distinctly original, indeed sui generis alternative world. Inevitably, in a time in which African elephants are being ravaged by poachers and their species endangered by incursions into their natural habitat, The White Bone is not a casual reading experience. It will linger long in the memory, like an intensely unnerving yet wonderfully strange dream.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

“Inspired . . . A marvel of a book . . . The language, social structure, intellectual and spiritual world of elephants are as real as the fabric of human life. Absolutely compelling.” —Alice Munro

“Gowdy's chief accomplishment is that she manages genuinely to entrench us in the elephant psyche . . . dazzling . . . Gowdy renders this arid African landscape with a subtle gorgeousness reminiscent of Isak Dinesen.” —The Boston Globe

“Gowdy here performs her greatest creative feat yet . . . Gowdy conjures a vibrantly visceral world . . . The White Bone presents a lyrical educated guess on what elephant consciousness might feel like - including, most sadly and movingly, the perpetual threat of extinction.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Fascinating . . . Through the course of The White Bone we come to care about the elephants as much as we would humans.” —Judy Doenges, The Seattle Times

“Written like an indigenous legend, The White Bone is about the burden of memory . . . Readers who make it through will never think the same of elephants and their ‘appalling resilience.'” —Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

“Gowdy [has a] great gift for sensual description...The novel is plenty funny and plenty odd.” —Sarah Boxer, The New York Times Book Review

“Compelling . . .The White Bone takes place in a self-sufficient and brilliantly authentic world . . . Impressive and delightful.” —Jelena Petrovic, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A richly detailed novel.” —New York Daily News

“Brave . . . Gowdy has embarked on the creation of an extremely distinct, invented world, with its own social and linguistic structures, its own myths and totems.” —Claire Messud, Newsday

From the Publisher

Barbara Gowdy's The White Bone (1998), a kind of tragic epic of African elephants narrated from the perspective of the elephants, undertakes to cross the boundary between species in an extraordinarily visceral, sensuous, and poetic rendering of language unparalleled in contemporary literature. You need not believe that elephants can think in language-in this case, a highly lyric English-to be enthralled by the author's imaginative immersion in her subject, a brilliantly inspired melding of research into the lives of African elephants and the creation of a distinctly original, indeed sui generis alternative world. Inevitably, in a time in which African elephants are being ravaged by poachers and their species endangered by incursions into their natural habitat, The White Bone is not a casual reading experience. It will linger long in the memory, like an intensely unnerving yet wonderfully strange dream.

The New York Review of Books - Joyce Carol Oates