To the Elephant Graveyard

by Tarquin Hall

Release Date: 02 September, 2001

Edition: Paperback

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What a blast!

This is a great read. Like all good books, it is an amalgamation of many things: a memoir, a travelogue, a social & environmental critique, and a great adventure with a dash of mystery and lots of humor. The title is a bit stodgy, but the story is far from it. We really see India in a different light, a land both benign and disturbingly fatalistic. Tarquin manages to couple some very visceral descriptions of locales with a profound appreciation for India and the elephant that is rarely seen in literature. Tarquin is going to mature into a great travel writer someday soon. Meanwhile, somebody give this man a prize ($) so he can dash off on another adventure (so we can read about it in his next book).

disappointing

I had high hopes for this book. It had potential: the setting in India, a unique story line, the promise of adventure and danger, crusty British tea planters, shades of Kipling and the Raj. But it just doesn't deliver.

Tarquin Hall is a British reporter working for the AP in New Delhi. He is bored with his desk job. When he comes across news reports of a rogue elephant on the rampage in Assam in northeast India he persuades his editor to let him cover the story. In Assam he meets Dinesh Choudhury, the hunter assigned to kill the animal. What follows is an account of the chase.

Unfortunately, Hall has an irritatingly clunky, awkward writing style. Some of his comments can be self-serving. More seriously, he displays a slightly patronising attitude towards the Indians, in particular his trusty mahout sidekicks Churchill, Mole, and Badger who represent the book's relentless "comic relief" element. It is all faintly embarrassing.

The taciturn hunter Dinesh Choudhury is the most fascinating character in the book primarily because, I suspect, he does not offer Hall much opportunity to ridicule him. Hall treats him with wary respect. He must have found the hunter frustrating. Ultimately we do not know much about Mr. Choudhury. I would like to have learned more.

An unsatisfying book.