The White Bone: A Novel

By Barbara Gowdy

If elephants could tell just one story, it would be the story of Mud, a young elephant cow orphaned at birth and blessed with visionary powers. Mud’s life on the African plain is changed forever when she and her adopted family are forced by prolonged drought to linger at one of the few remaining watering holes. The herd is ambushed there by ivory poachers, who kill almost all the cows and their young. The traumatized survivors, including a pregnant Mud, set out in search of the talismanic white bone that can lead them to a paradise free from human savagery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781443400794

Barbara Gowdy

Barbara Gowdy is the author of seven books, including Helpless, The Romantic, The White Bone, Mister Sandman, We So Seldom Look on Love and Falling Angels, all of which have been met with widespread international acclaim and critical praise. She has been a finalist three times for the Governor General’s Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, twice for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. In 1996 she received the Marian Engel Award, and in 2008 the Trillium Book Award. Barbara Gowdy is a Member of the Order of Canada and a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Toronto.

Reviews for The White Bone

[hagertyhartfeldt · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I love Gowdy's writing, but this novel requires more effort than I was willing to expend. After trying twice to get started, I gave up.

[mgaulding_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite books ever.

[corgidog2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

African elephants fight for survival against nature and man-told from the point of view of the elephants. (Sounds corny but it works.)

[kellyoyo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Though it was worth reading, The White Bone is proof that lit writers shouldn't mess with speculative fiction unless they do a little homework first.Everything was perfect about this book except one thing: the speculative aspect. It was fascinating to be in the elephants' world, but I thought the portrayal of individual personalities and relationships between the elephants was weak and fell back on human tropes and stereotypes. This was especially true in the portrayal of romantic longing between male and female elephants. It just didn't ring true.