THE ELEPHANT KEEPER

This is not a classic story like the The Elephant's Journey by Jose Saramago, but it's not Walt Disney's Dumbo either. This is a interesting novel about two elephants and their keeper journeying through England during the late seventeen hundreds. It's written by Christopher Nicholson, an award winning documentary producer for the BBC in England. You can feel his love for animals throughout the novel. The story is well formulated and uses the language and spelling of the times.

The novel starts out with a ship arriving in Bristol, England from the East Indies with various cargo, including exotic animals. Two of the crates contain two very sick elephants. They are purchased by a sugar merchant, John Harrington, for his estate, and are turned over to a young horse groomer, Tom Page, for the elephant's care and training. This turns out to be the start of decades of love between the trainer and the animals. Eventually the male elephant, Timothy, gets sold to another estate because of aggressive behavior. In the ensuing years Tom tries to find out what happened to Timothy, and when he finds out, it's not pretty.

The bulk of the book is spent on the life and trials of the keeper and his female elephant, Jenny. The communication between the two in the book is quoted conversation, but it's implied to be mental telepathy. It's really well done and has the reader believing that Tom and Jenny are really talking to each other. How much could we learn if this was possible? Jenny is bought and sold many times, including time spent at a menagerie, which is a humbling experience for both the keeper and animal. The book's ending is a little vague, but satisfying versus what I thought it would be.

This is a quality novel, and I highly recommend it to all the animal lovers out there. The book makes the reader wonder why man treats a magnificent animal like a elephant so dreadfully. Every so often you have to read a story like this to make you once again aware of animal conservation.   

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Christopher Nicholson has been involved with natural history all his life and has produced many BBC programs relating to the relationship between humans and animals. His previous novel was The Fattest Man In America, which is about a 1,000 pound man in Texas who decides to market himself as a tourist attraction.What??