The Elephant Keeper - Hardcover

Nicholson, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061651605 ISBN 13: 9780061651601

Publisher: William Morrow, 2009

Synopsis

“Intensely moving. [An] exceptional novel.”
—Boston Globe

 

A poignant and magical story set in eighteenth-century England, The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson is the tale of two baby elephants and the young man who accidentally finds himself their guardian. Every reader who was enchanted by Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants or enthralled by When Elephants Weep will adore Nicholson’s The Elephant Keeper—a masterful blending of historical novel, coming-of-age tale, animal adventure, and love story.

About this title

About the Author

A prizewinning radio documentary producer who has worked for the BBC World Service, Christopher Nicholson rode an elephant for the first time at Chitwan National Park in Nepal. He has been interested in natural history his entire life, and many of the programs he produced for the BBC revolved around the connection between animals and humans. Because of a love for the novels of Thomas Hardy, Nicholson and his wife settled in Dorset, England, with their two children.

From the Back Cover

"I asked the sailor what an Elephant looked like; he replied that it was like nothing on earth."

England, 1766: After a long voyage from the East Indies, a ship docks in Bristol, England, and rumor quickly spreads about its unusual cargo—some say a mermaid is on board. A crowd forms, hoping to catch a glimpse of the magical creature. One crate after another is unpacked: a zebra, a leopard, and a baboon. There's no mermaid, but in the final two crates is something almost as magical—a pair of young elephants, in poor health but alive.

Seeing a unique opportunity, a wealthy sugar merchant purchases the elephants for his country estate and turns their care over to a young stable boy, Tom Page. Tom's family has long cared for horses, but an elephant is something different altogether. It takes time for Tom and the elephants to understand one another, but to the surprise of everyone on the estate, a remarkable bond is formed.

The Elephant Keeper, the story of Tom and the elephants, in Tom's own words, moves from the green fields and woods of the English countryside to the dark streets and alleys of late-eighteenth-century London, reflecting both the beauty and the violence of the age. Nicholson's lush writing and deft storytelling complement a captivating tale of love and loyalty between one man and the two elephants that change the lives of all who meet them.

Reviews

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Ron Charles If you donate $100 to the National Zoo's upcoming elephant exhibit, you'll receive a pin made from elephant poo paper, which is just what it sounds like. But we'll take anything we can get from these fascinating creatures. For thousands of years, that desire has driven a market for their ivory, their feet and their freedom, as elephants have been worshiped and slaughtered, applauded and abused. More recently, even the best-intentioned efforts to cultivate elephants in zoos have come under persuasive criticism from groups insisting that the animals suffer in captivity. Sadly, our love affair with elephants, nurtured from the earliest children's books, has too often proved deadly to them. Christopher Nicholson's enchanting first novel is full of the mingled affection and tragedy that have long marked our relationship with the world's largest terrestrial animals. "The Elephant Keeper" is a strange tour of late 18th-century England, a natural history of elephants and the story of a most unusual friendship, all told with a touch of the otherworldly elegance and wit of Babar. The story opens in the port city of Bristol in 1766, when a young groomsman named Tom Page hears a rumor that sailors have brought a mermaid to the harbor. Although that proves to be false, their actual cargo is equally exotic: "a Leopard, a striped horse, two Elephants, and a baboon with a white beard and blue testicles." After 91 days in wooden crates, the animals are dead or dying, but Tom's wealthy master buys the two baby elephants and puts him in charge of caring for them on his massive estate. Nicholson is a radio documentary producer in Britain, and, in Tom Page, he's created a narrator who shares his faith in careful, factual storytelling. "The simple Truth should be your aim," his employer tells him, and so Tom begins a touching, sometimes bitterly sad adventure that will last decades and take him all over England. Nicholson's story reminds us of how little people in the West knew about these animals. Tom's master has ambitious plans to raise elephants and harvest their tusks the way ranchers take wool from their sheep. "The tusks will re-grow," he tells Tom confidently. "Once they reach a certain length, they are shed, like the antlers of deer in the autumn." Right. Even Tom, though charged with their care, knows nothing more about the animals than his master does. He discovers what they can eat and do only through "a kind of guess-work." When they're sick, he bleeds them, purges them and hopes for the best. Nicholson captures the quiet rhythms of country life in rich, harvest colors. But he also illustrates that this was a time when attitudes about nature were in radical flux. We hear of scholars debating whether animals have souls, whether they think and have language. Inspired by new romantic attitudes, wealthy gentlemen want jewellike lakes dug and Edenic groves planted. They construct faux ruins and Grecian temples on their estates, complete with actors playing hermits. The elephants are an irresistible accoutrement. The novel's allure rests upon Nicholson's ability to render the relationship between the young keeper and his Indian elephants in this incongruous setting. They're awfully magical as they wander the English countryside together. "Greatly excited, and making little squeals and rumbles of pleasure, the Elephants grazed though the blue-bells, their trunks flying out to latch on to hazel branches, which they dragged and tore down and stuffed into their mouths," Tom writes. "The Elephants' feet squeaked on the leaves, crushing them and making them smell strongly." Just when the novel seems a little too adorable, the complicated undertone of Tom's devotion begins to rumble in the background. "It was a curious sensation to feel a waft of hot Elephant breath on my cheek or ear," he writes in one of many intimations that his attraction to these animals is tinged with romantic ardor. Even as he celebrates this remarkable friendship, Nicholson wants to explore the darker implications of such devotion. "Your life is ruled by the Elephants," Tom's frustrated girlfriend tells him. "You are shackled to them, you are their slave, you have no time for anything else." But Tom can't hear such criticism. "How could they begin to understand," he thinks, "when they do not understand the Elephants, when they do not even see them properly. . . ? They have to be cared for. No one else can do it." His obsessiveness keeps the animals alive, but at what cost to Tom and everyone else in his life? These elephants are large, after all, large enough to take up all the room in his heart. He wonders too late if he's keeping the elephants or if they're keeping him. If you've ever watched elephants for a while, you have a pretty good idea of this novel's pacing and your own tolerance for it. For several chapters, the story doesn't appear to move at all, but at other times (too late for some readers, I fear) it thunders along with surprising speed. I never found it boring, but it's easy for me to imagine other zoogoers who would rather move on to the snack pavilion. Frankly, I'm surprised that Nicholson's editor didn't insist on a more effective distribution of the action. There's a rape, for goodness' sake, a mugging, a fistfight, even a murder and a flight for survival! But all those excitements are loaded in the novel's second half. What's evident in every chapter, though, is Nicholson's attention to these animals, their incongruous heft and grace, the dexterous twist and twirl of their trunks, their haunting sense of wisdom and forbearance. It's no accident that Tom refers to "Gulliver's Travels" several times. Like Swift's intrepid adventurer, Tom has been won over by an expression of humanity greater than humankind's. You may be, too.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Had Christopher Nicholson simply tried to write a historical novel of the 18th century, critics probably would not have liked his book quite so much. Most of them found at least one aspect of the book that bothered them—from the occasional flat character to inconsistent pacing to episodes they felt didn't make sense. But all were so charmed by the writing and by the way the author develops the characters of the pachyderms Timothy and Jenny, as well as their relationship to Tom, that they were happy to recommend the book even to those readers who aren't animal people.

A tale by BBC radio documentary producer Nicholson about a man and an elephant canters along at a delightful pace, from the first meeting between the two on the quay in Bristol, England. In 1773, Tom Page writes a history of the well-trained elephant, Jenny, and his life as a humble groom for the Harrington family's elephants that he learned to care for as a teenager. Lizzy Tindall, a bold young maid, endears herself to Tom and his elephants, but when the female, Jenny, is sold, Lizzy urges Tom to stay—that Jenny is only an Elephant. Tom, outraged, chooses to go with Jenny. The animal and keeper communicate, converse even, in their quarters in the elephant house. The pair subsequently move from master to master, ending up in a miserable menagerie in London. Befogged and befuddled in the cruel city, an aged Tom strays from Jenny only to discover that his respect for the tenderhearted elephant is singular. Nicholson's elegiac alternate endings leave only the memory of their lasting bond—the elephant's legendary ability to never forget is finally ours. (Aug.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061651605
• ISBN 13: 9780061651601
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304