Review: Taken
Reviewed by David Hill
Author:
Alex Stone
Publisher:
Vanguard Press
ISBN:
9781800165700
Date published:
July 2023
Pages:
616
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$50.00
All books bought via this link help us to review more books from Aotearoa — thank you for supporting local books and authors
This debut from South African-born, now Waiheke Island-based Alex Stone claims to be the first novel ever written ‘in first-person elephant.’ I can't see there being a....a herd of competitors.
You could say that Taken is a bit of a Jumbo itself: 600 large-format, tightly- printed pages, including a bibliography which shows how comprehensively the author has researched his topic and how deeply he feels about associated animal welfare.
It's the stories of three Indian elephants: Biligiri (father-to-be), Pulmulla and Tant-Meisie (visionary and solitary respectively). It's related to and by their African acquaintance, Hannibal Solo – Star Wars, anyone? Each of the quartet comes with an intimately linked human: a Kiwi hostage-rescuer in Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia), an animal researcher, et al. Each comes also with a nifty visual logo to help distinguish their narratives.
Those narratives range from late-ish 19th century to present decade, from the Belgian Congo to Kentucky. Various people, places, events did or do exist and happen. Stone works hard to make them happen several degrees more dramatically, through a teeming plot which largely follows a march into ‘the fabled land of Abyssinia,’ towards siege and slaughter.
This odyssey and its attendant ordeals are accompanied by an avalanche of associated events: a choir aromatic with Lifebuoy Soap; an escaped breast (sic); a flotilla of Moorish ships; a train-jumper in charcoal grey suit and striped tie; an attacker whose advance becomes a reverse skid; a mass shooting – though ''only five'' in US terms. Plus hundreds more.
Scores of other elephants also appear, one endearingly called George Eliot. So do a secretary bird (avian), explorer Henry Stanley, an arrival in a voluminous red flannel nightdress, some 14 mahouts, “the fretful Miss Ferreira.” Plus – again – hundreds more. We also get plot-related illustrations: a Catalina flying boat; a soaring vulture; an enigmatic visitor with broad-bladed spear. Plus just dozens more.
Big can be beautiful. And bountiful - you learn a lot about pachyderms from Taken. According to the author, they appreciate the odd alcoholic aperitif; never talk to goats (‘so decidedly inferior’); pick up a lot of information from ground vibrations; always notice the details of humans' comically naked little hands. That's all rather effective.
Stone tells you a good deal early on about his motifs, motives, metaphors and main directions, which may or may not be a good idea. His writing is generally spirited, flecked with poetry and inventories. The brisk present tense helps. Each page is engrossing enough, though the sheer mass of them may make you want to have a lie-down occasionally. There's a declamatory Grand Opera tone to things and his people or animals do have a weakness for sententious pronouncements: ‘Such are human memories expunged;’ ‘It is the fundamental corruption in the flawed concept of the great chain of being.’ Ouch.
Has his reach exceeded his grasp? Sometimes he flounders but at other times his rendering can be so singular, so startling, that you'll hear yourself exclaiming aloud. Does he succeed with the Elephant Speak? He certainly makes it distinctive, with a gravity of tone, abundance of imagery, repetitive cadences that mark it off from the human voices. Much of it reads like any competent rendering of an alien culture, which isn't inappropriate.
The novel has grown out of an award-winning short story with the same title. My word, how it's grown. So could it – should it – be shorter? I wouldn't mind. But it's a saga of big beasts, a horde of humans, immense distances and epic ambitions and, of course, memories that never forget. Look at it from the pachyderms' perspective.
Reviewed by David Hill
