theelephantstale

Judge A Book By Its Cover

Book Reviews and Synopses

Lauren St. John

The Elephant's Tale

St. John, Lauren. Elephant’s Tale. The Penguin Group. New York, NY. 2010

The Elephant's Tale is a horrific novel written by Lauren St. John. It is a story of great loss, giving the reader a great sense of longing. Unfortunately, because of its poor execution, it leaves you feeling disconnected and empty. The Elephant’s Tale is the fourth book in the Legend of the Animal Healer series, all of which are equally horrible.

The Elephant’s Tale is about Bobby Stephen, a very poor excuse for a character. The only thing you ever learn about her is that she likes animals. She goes around the world helping animals, but things always go horribly wrong This obviously means that she should just stop trying to help animals. In this particular situation she is trying to help elephants.

Bobby travels to Elephant Island with her close friend Tom Hanks, to find and dismantle a bomb. When they arrive they are greeted by the island natives. Their leader is Ted, the famed dragon slayer, cloud guru, and three time Jeopardy champion. Obviously, Bobby does not share Ted’s views on slaying dragons for sport, so their friendship never blossoms. Tom Hanks -on the other hand- gets along with Ted very well. In fact, their companionship goes so well, that Ted gives Tom Hanks ten elephants. When the elephants start to glow, Bobby insists that something is wrong, but Tom Hanks does not take her warnings into consideration and starts an elephant farm. The idea works well at first but, because of the high cost of elephant feed, the business is unable to expand and slowly deteriorates.

With his business failed and his dreams crushed, Tom Hanks seeks the advice of the old yogi who lives at the top of the mountain. He and Bobby make the long journey up the mountain only to be disappointed because the yogi ends up being really vague. “ ‘Why are we here? What is love? Why are the Lakers so bad? These are answers that I will never know. But what I do know is that your question has no answer,’ ” replies the yogi when asked about elephant farming. When asked about the glowing elephants he says that there is a great darkness controlling them.

The idea of this novel was very good. It had fantastic potential to become a classic, but ended up as in a monstrous train wreck. The Elephant’s Tale will most likely destroy any love for literature that you may have. It is highly recommended that you do not read this book.

0 out of 5 stars

Contributed by C. Mullenneaux

January 31, 2013