3 Review(s)

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 elephantback. 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] geat read, a terrific novel!" Lewis Robinson