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One visitor in particular is an almost allegorical representation of self-interest at any cost, and Jo seems incapable of banishing him. That would be Alecto Ryle. This unwelcome guest turns out to have made his reputation on sadistic experiments and autopsy reports, not to mention the massacres that enabled them--and now he's hanging around the Safari, waiting for one or more of the animals to die.
In her first novel, Kim Echlin can occasionally be expository, particularly in Sophie's five-part Elephant-English Dictionary. This is a very different beast from the glossary Barbara Gowdy created for The White Bone, but it also has its beauties. Describing one salute, Sophie admits that most keepers "hold in disdain people who romanticize elephants, but I have seen my elephants singing this evening song into the grey Ontario winter twilight. Their bodies appear to soften and shift like clouds on the rocky fields." Though Elephant Winter's human factor is itself gripping, Echlin's evocation of the intimate rapport between her heroine and the creatures she inherits can be sublime. After the matriarch, Kezia, loses her baby, she unshackles herself and escapes.
Through the darkness I finally saw her body, swaying down the road where horse farms and vegetable farms were strung like beads through the fields. She walked slowly and alone on that dark country road as if she were memorizing something. Drops of milk hung frozen from her breast.Terrified that Kezia will panic, Sophie realizes that the best thing to do is let her take charge, and puts her arm out: "After an infinite five seconds, she reached out, hooked her trunk around my arm, slowly turned and began to lead me home." Readers not intrigued by elephants or by the possibility of deep communication will not be taken by this lyrical novel--but are there such people? --Kerry Fried
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