Elephant

by Paul Pickering

In a country house in England a precocious teenage exile from revolutionary Russia sets down his adventures on paper, beginning with his first ball in St Petersburg and how he frees a huge African elephant from a cruel circus. But a hundred years later an American academic feels the boy may have invented the elephant as the only kind and uplifting being in dark times.

336 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2021

About the author

Paul Pickering is the author of seven novels, Wild About Harry, Perfect English, The Blue Gate of Babylon, Charlie Peace, The Leopard’s Wife, Over the Rainbow and Elephant. The Blue Gate of Babylon was a New York Times notable book of the year, who dubbed it ‘superior literature’. Often compared to Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Pickering was chosen as one of the top ten young British novelists by bookseller WH Smith and has been long-listed for the Booker Prize three times. Educated at the Royal Masonic Schools and the University of Leicester, he has a PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, presented his doctoral thesis to the Bulgakov Society in Moscow, recently completed a Hawthornden Fellowship Residency on Lake Como and is a member of the Folio Prize Academy. The novelist J.G. Ballard said Pickering’s work is ‘truly subversive’. As well as short stories and poetry, he has written plays, film scripts and columns for The Times and Sunday Times. He lives in London and the Pyrenees.

Reviews

[Paula · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ridiculous,boring,badly written. Chick lit.🤦

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sheer delight of a book - I absolutely loved it. As someone who ingests a fairly steady diet of broad spectrum fantasy and science fiction, it was nice to remind myself what genuinely excellent literary fiction is like.

Don't get me wrong, as well as being fantastic, the tale is also fantastical. It's magical, without the magic. Funny, bleak, beautiful and ugly... Great writing too, with an ending that I loved, then hated, then chose to love again.

Y'know - just read the thing. It is wonderful.

[Kayla Kaasa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Kevin Cowdall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have said before that Paul Pickering’s work stands comparison with that of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Certainly, his novels contain all the elements one would associate with the two literary masters: An often bewildered central character adrift in alien and dangerous locations, as events beyond his control unfold around him. Varied cultural, religious, and political clashes. Assorted villains, and beautiful, mysterious, love interests.

They are all here in his latest novel, ‘Elephant’, in which a modern day New York academic and poet researches a hundred-year-old hand-written manuscript detailing the adventures of a precocious teenage exile from revolutionary Russia. How much of this tale of lavish balls at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, giving counsel to King George V and his Prime Minister, Lloyd-George, and freeing a huge African elephant from a circus can she believe? She is determined to unearth the truth.

This is a hugely entertaining, page-turning, novel, with richly drawn characters and a genuine sense of period and place. Highly recommended.

[Laura Spira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book by Paul Pickering that I have read and I shall certainly seek out the others. It is a mysterious story of a boy, who may or may not be the son of the last Tsar of Russia, and his escape from Russia during which he rescues an elephant. The boy's story is presented as a document received by a modern day writer and researcher and the chapters alternate between the two time periods. I found the modern day sections rather irritating interruptions to the progress of the story but the structure provides a neat, although necessarily ambiguous, ending.

The writing is excellent, time and place beautifully evoked and I felt as if i knew the elephant quite well by the end of the book. But it is one of those novels that makes me feel that I should know much more about the historical background to fully appreciate it, a problem I have with some historical fiction when the author has not quite managed to make the work stand in its own right. (Or write.)

[Ellie T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a difficult one to review! There was much I loved about this book: particularly the almost fairy tale like story of the young (possible) descendent of the last Tsar of Russia. I found the historical references fascinating, and distressing, and they made me want to know more.

But... I finished the novel ever-so-slightly bewildered and unsure what to make of it. I wished I'd had someone to discuss it with afterwards to try and work out what was what, what was real and what was not.

There were also a few really glaring typos which grated with me and spoiled the flow. For me though, the thing that took the rating down was the sentence close to the end which described our young, possibly fictitious to some degree, hero as "autistic and probably at least borderline Aspergers". This made absolutely no sense to me and detracted from the overall experience a lot.

Loved the elephant though, whether it was real or imagined. If imaginary, that would explain why it remained pink!