New in English in 2018, in translation from Swiss German, this light speculative fiction adventure - about a genetically engineered miniature pink elephant and the homeless man who stumbles on him - may appeal to fans of Jonas Jonasson and Frederik Backman. I received a free Advance Review Copy ebook from Netgalley and the publisher, Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins UK.
[3.5] A light read narrated in a tone similar to The Hundred Year Old Man and A Man Called Ove. The first protagonist on the scene, Schoch, a middle-aged alcoholic homeless on the streets of Zurich, is from the same curmudgeonly stable of characters, who, in their real life incarnations, might not be so likeable - but are made sympathetic, and sometimes endearingly comic, by that children's-book-for-adults authorial voice.
As is typical with novels like these, Elefant takes the reader on a caper through various locations, situations and occupations many people have hardly ever thought about - although here several of them have to do with elephants and/or genetic engineering. (I don't think I've read such detail about the collection of semen from domesticated animals for artificial insemination since James Herriot books - but here the tone isn't laugh-out-loud awkwardness; now, it's decades later and a different species. A matter-of-fact clinical tone subtly communicates a sense of it and other artificial reproduction procedures as demeaning and tragic for the animals.) Seriousness is generally offset soon enough, though, by likeable or picaresque characters, or the outright endearing. (I've had to watch videos of baby elephants to try and see some of the cutest behaviours described - I particularly like this one.) And there are bumbling chases and stakeouts that wouldn't be out of place in a 1970s British farce. Perhaps the cosiest, most escapist aspect of the novel is in the first two thirds, where several chapters evoke the joy of living alone in a big comfortable house with a sociable pet, and reading a lot. These are scenes to revel in and to curl up in. A nice detail was that we don't get lovely descriptions of snow scenes in winter - I wondered where they were in December chapters, as I'd been looking forward to them - but using that old friend of the Eng Lit student, pathetic fallacy, 'unnatural' out-of-season blizzards, and the longed-for Christmas-card scenery, arrive in late May.
There are underlying values in the book which to some, probably seem so normal as not to be noticeable, especially to Continental Western Europeans in late middle age and older. (The author is 70, and Elefant was first published last year.) Some of these will, and some won't, go down well with others... Refugees are basically good and should be helped, especially if they are nice people and share the values of your country (the just-post-Second World War generation taking this as more of a given than many younger centrists and conservatives); genetic engineering feels wrong and unnatural on a gut level and could have worrying repercussions; there's something satisfying about formerly well-off people who fell on hard times getting restored to their (rightful?) station; and China is supplanting America as a certain kind of antagonist: a big unethical corporate threat that's increasingly over here (also makes a work more saleable to Americans...). Very EU values, especially if considering the EU as neoliberal - although it's actually a Swiss-German novel. The prevalence of wealth in the culture - especially later in the book - is very Swiss, and especially very Zurich, as I understand from my Goodreads friend Warwick, who lives there. Homelessness is apparently not visible as it is in UK cities. With the range of centres and soup kitchens available to Schoch and his comrades through the day, it's perhaps evident why. It's a level of service that suggests Swiss cities may be among the easier places in the world to be street homeless, better at any rate than contemporary Britain, especially as this provision is combined with a basic benefit rate of 986 CHF per month for a homeless person, equivalent at current exchange rates to slightly more than 10 weeks' worth of UK Jobseeker's Allowance (although Suter doesn't give details of the criteria).
Homelessness, alongside genetic engineering and elephant behaviour, are subjects on which Suter has done his research, including with people who have first-hand knowledge, as the acknowledgements explain. It's a shame that a few clangers, mostly, but not all, on other topics, remain in this edition. It doesn't tally with a vet's scientific knowledge that his biggest fear about genetic engineering would be infectious diseases that targeted specific human racial groups. Did that really get past the geneticists who read the manuscript? Or was that included later or despite them? How are all these vets moving into exotics practice from other specialties with such ease? Is it less of a big deal in some countries than in the UK? Did no-one at all try to correct a character's saying that not eating meat helped save the ozone layer?? (Rather that reduce carbon emissions or climate change.) Someone with opinions on animals as strong as hers these days seems likely to be vegan, not only vegetarian - but that would have meant that Suter wouldn't have had the opportunity to write about so many traditional Swiss dishes containing cheese. Why does an intelligent Burmese man who's been living in Switzerland for about 20 years still have such poor English? (The answer does seem too likely to be stereotyping.) And why would he name an elephant in Hindi when he talks to the animals in Burmese?
For me, these points didn't impinge too much on the narrative as a whole - Elefant is decent light / comfort reading and frequently made me smile - and I don't, in any case, expect popular fiction to be flawless. (It's an unexpected surprise if it doesn't have any errors, stereotypes or plot-holes.) I keep wavering between rounding down to 3 stars (which wouldn't reflect how much I enjoyed stretches of the book, on a scale with my other ratings) and 4 stars (which I feel a bit guilty about, because of the stereotyping of Kaung, and the way the wheels of the plot are oiled by the 'goodies' turning out to have connections and lots of money. Although the latter, especially from a UK/US perspective, also just reflects hard facts of life in which private charity is becoming increasingly important as state provision declines - having the authorities sort everything out, as happens in plotlines of some Nordic works, seems ever more distant and utopian.)
The novel also left me impressed with the versatility of translator Jamie Bulloch - the other of his translations I've read was the tense German modern classic [book:The Mussel Feast|16138043], which has a markedly different style. It was great reading a translation into British English, as so many UK publishers commission or reprint American ones these days.
Elefant won't appeal to everyone: it hasn't got a lot to offer to readers who only go for the highly literary or experimental, and others may think its political underpinnings leave something to be desired. But, although whimsical, it thankfully isn't as cheesy as the current UK cover's tagline suggests ("true friends come in all shapes and sizes"); and if you like the Jonasson type of caper novel for an occasional break , or just because, it may be worth a look.
(read and reviewed August 2018; the review and comment thread on Goodreads.
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