Articles liés à The Elephant Graveyard: A Moby Dick for Elephants
Synopsis
Myrtle Bailey’s death in the circus ring clouds the lives of 5 people and one elephant: Hazel (her daughter, chief elephant handler); Brown E (a clown, once Hazel’s lover); Dinty (her husband, once a contortionist); Jonas Frank (proprietor of the circus); Spike (her son, ghost narrator of the story); and Hero (blackest elephant in the world, oiled to blackness to grab attention during the dreary years of the Depression). Their fortunes are tied to those of the Blues, a black family: widowed mother Maudine; Royale (favored son, hair of ginger, skin of peach); Elbo (born elbowfirst); and Prize (for Surprise, Elbo’s unexpected twin who came tumbling after). Amid the sawdust and spangles, the jitters and jangle, erupt scenes both horrific and exotic: a king cobra loose in a Chicago penthouse; a black boy trampled to death in a Toledo citysquare; slaves riddled with smallpox left on West African riverbanks awaiting crocodiles; a white elephant in musth (testosterone overdrive); a striptease on elephant back. Multiple thrills and zaniness mingle with meditations on slavery, circusing, the afterlife, and the ivory trade as Spike learns that karma is a killer as much as a deliverer. A Moby Dick for elephants, The Elephant Graveyard is as rich with elephantalia as its predecessor was with whalology, as informed by Melville’s incantatory prose and philosophical concerns, and attempts to understand why bad things happen to good people.
A novel set in mid-20th-century Ohio revolves around a circus troupe.
Spike Bailey, the narrator and main character of Desai’s tale, is a humble trouper in the Griffin Bros. Circus in Kendall Green in 1948. “As juggler or tumbler I might have been counted among acrobats, but as a bullman not even among joeys,” Spike clarifies in the circus period patois that fills the book’s first section. “I was barely above ponypunks and dogboys in the circus dungeon.” But the spell of the colorful life has caught him “the way the sea and the sky get in the blood of the sailor.” One of the stars of the Griffin Bros. show is Hero, the blackest elephant in the world (tended by the show’s mahout, Siri), and another is Mary Eileen McDonnell, billed as “the Girleen from Ballaghaderreen.” When a man named Elbo de Bleu, fleeing from the police, seeks refuge with the circus, his arrival precipitates an intricate series of events that steadily spirals out of control and results in Hero being poisoned and Spike landing in India with a guide named Prem W. Gupta. Spike narrates the tragedy at the heart of his moving story from a wiser and sadder future point: “Despise me if you will, I would think less of you if you didn’t, but you couldn’t despise me more than I despised myself.” …
[A] … tale of crime, circus life, and enlightenment.
—Kirkus Reviews
Told by a playful, supremely erudite and omniscient “ghost,” the novel offers the reader a leisurely, luxuriant view of the lives of joeys, bareback riders, roustabouts—and especially bullmen, those who work with elephants. Both funny and tragic, what sets Desai's work apart is the exuberance of the narrative style and the lushness of the prose, which conspire to create the mesmerizing sensation of a circus seen by a child for the first time.
—Michael C. White, author of Soul Catcher
Part rollicking epic, part multi-generational ghost story, part disquisition on our original sins, The Elephant Graveyard delivers a vivid, merciless portrait of America in all its glory and monstrosity. Boman Desai has built from such ambitious material a deeply human novel, large-hearted and bold, chock full of rich characters and commentary. This is a great read, a terrific novel!
—Lewis Robinson, author of Officer Friendly and Other Stories and Water Dogs.
Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.