Captivating

That's what I think when I think about reading The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy. I have never read her before, and had no conscious intention to, but when I saw this book in my favorite used store and read the back I was enchanted. The entire story is from the perspective of elephants. When I thought about it later and realized the incredible culture that Gowdy created around the elephants, I am blown away. She obviously did piles of research, but it never takes on an iota of that feeling. It all seems so natural, yet the persepective is so completely different than ours. Extraordinarily, she makes you almost understand how the smell or taste of the dung or urine of a friend or relative could be blissful. She takes you into the thoughts and the out-of-control urges of females and males during mating. She allows you to effortlessly experience the culture of their matriarchy and the roles and daily rhythms. It sounds bizarre, I know, but she really is an extraordinary writer.

The story is of the elephants' search for a magical white bone, which is the rib bone of a newborn elephant. This bone, when found, will direct the elephants to The Safe Place where there are no humans slaughtering them and sawing of their tusks, no drought, no hunger. The book tracks a number of main characters and their journey around the landscape, most importantly Mud and Tall Time (a cow and a bull elephant).

The story had a kind of dreamy quality, and I was captivated and enchanted throughout. The extent of the perspective shift that the reader experiences in this book is remarkable, and yet occurs so naturally and effortlessly that I honestly completely forgot that it wasn't elephants telling the story, that this was a product of an imagination - that she had to construct it. It just seemed so real....