Whistling for the Elephants by Sandi Toksvig

Whistling for the Elephants Reviews

• 
  Diana

  Great book. Funny, at times surreal, account of a 10 year old English girl taken by her parents to live in Sassaspaneck, New York in 1968. With no friends of her own age and parents who have little time for her, she aligns herself with a group of eccentrics running a decidedly down-at-heel zoo on the outskirts of the town. The characters are beautifully drawn. From laugh-out-loud sections to moments of heartbreaking sadness, this book is a revelation from start to finish. Unreservedly recommended.
• 
  Mrs E M Morgan

  This is a lovely little book. Set over the summer of 1968, 10 year old Dorothy, daughter in a dysfunctional family, is removed from a life of luxury travelling in Europe with her mother, to live in small town America. Believable characters, wonderful plot lines, humour, sadness and everything in between, including the elephants, can be found in these pages.
• 
  Jo Lin

  I wanted so much to like this book, because I think Sandi Toksvig's great in the BBC News Quiz. And the first section (before the main character reaches America) contained lovely gems of Toksvig's dry wit and keen observations. But in the rest of the book (i.e., the other 250 pages or so) I rather felt like her style became rather generic and after a while I gave up caring about the characters and just skimemed through the pages to find out what the ending was.
• 
  Pam

  This was a fabulous book. You went on an amazing journey with the characters, with snippets being revealed like confidences scattered throughout the text.
  
  By far my favourite line in the novel, revealing a real insight into the mind of a ten year old was:
  "Anyway he was whatever you are when you're more than thirty and not dead yet."
  
  I will definitely be reading more by Toksvig.
• 
  WF

  This was really not what I was expecting at all! Though elephants are mentioned in the title and the story is about a neglected 10-year-old girl discovering the local (strange) zoo, animals, her relationship with them - or even her relationship with the women that run the zoo - is not the focus. Strangeness is the focus.
  
  "Strange" is a word that keeps coming to mind throughout the reading of this book. Dorothy is the "strange" child of the strange couple that moves into a strange town. She explores a strange zoo run by some strange women, and learns about the history of their relationships with some strange men. You could also substitute "strange" with "odd" in the above sentences to describe this story.
  
  However, set the strangeness aside, you realise the themes are: self-perception/coming of age, marginalised people (including people of colour, non-binary people, people with disabilities and mental illness), feminism, animal rights, individual freedom - packaged in a story about a 10-year-old that is not really for 10-year-olds to read.
  
• 
  Libbeth

  I am writing this quick review two years after reading this book, as a library book, so I don't have it to refer to, but I do remember with great fondness the description of the first encounter with the elephants and also the elephants and the swimming pool.
• 
  NaruNaruNaru

  The title is intriguing.
  It is what caught my attention.
  
  It was, how can I say, a book that I would recommend to girls to learn of strong women who inspires.
• 
  Megan

  In 1968, an oddball British girl spends an incredible summer in a small New York town. She has been trying to fit in, trying on identities, trying on little pieces of other people's lives to see if they fit her own, and amid a changing America, she finds self-confidence and a voice among an unusual zoo threatened with closure. There are mysteries surrounding the zoo, family secrets and tangled history and a town mythology, and Dorothy loses and finds herself in the middle of it all.
  
  I really like Sandi Toksvig on the News Quiz, but I haven't had any luck with her books until I tried this one. The quirky first-person voice drew me in, and the depiction of a confusing childhood was intriguing. I found the book as a whole entertaining and good-natured without being too cloying or sweet; it helped that Dorothy is precocious but that precociousness is punctured by her awkwardness, acknowledged obliviousness, and a painful deep desire to be loved, recognized, valued--a desire going unfulfilled from parental quarters. Witnessing Dorothy gain determination, a voice, and a feeling of belonging was a delight.
  
  The pacing wasn't consistent, it was hard to swallow that everyone in the town just volunteered all the relevant backstory to Dorothy with little to no prodding, and some of the plot stuff was ridiculous (if your antagonist is shouting "You damn feminists!" at the climax, it's all a bit cartoonish for me, even if it did fit with the rest of the book), but I still read it rather breathlessly.
• 
  Marianne

  Whistling for the Elephants is the first adult novel by Danish/British comedian, author, and TV presenter, Sandi Toksvig. In 1968, 10-year-old Dorothy Kane finds herself on a slightly bizarre ship journey from Southampton to New York with a mother who has made no effort to rear her children. Once in New York, her stiff English father takes his wife and daughter 50 miles upstate to the small town of Sassaspaneck on the Amherst River. Before long, Dorothy finds herself labelled a freak by the neighbourhood children and exposed to all the craziness of American life in the late sixties. Boating, hard-drinking, fire-fighting, BBQing and illegitimate mixed race babies all form part of life. Dorothy discovers the local zoo with its exotic inhabitants, both animal and human, and the fantastic house built there in the 1920s. To her delight, she acquires a nickname (Sugar) and through the reminiscences of various locals, she learns of the excesses and the tragic events of the original zoo owner and those close to him. Toksvig builds this tale to a climax that involves a confrontation between, on one side, the mayor, the dog catcher, the town football team and the fire-fighters, and on the other, six strong-willed women, a resourceful 10-year-old girl, a gander, an orangutan, two elephants and a grey parrot. Moving and funny.
• 
  Robert Day

  I picked this up by chance really; I was at work and I had no books with me so I chose one at random from the library thingy we have here. I'd listened to the author before on the radio; she hosts a quiz show thingy about the news. I kinda wish I hadn't though, because as I read the book, I could hear the author telling the story in her very distinctive voice, so much so that for a while it sounded to me like an autobiography.
  
  Small child, adrift and lost on the high seas of social interchange, finds hersef by hooking up with a well meaning bunch of social misfits in a small american town.
  
  You see, there's this zoo and the animals are at times indistinguishable from the humans living there, and everyone has a history and there are connections between all the inhabitants that run wide and deep. These connections become clearer and clearer to the small child until she undergoes an epiphany of sorts that defines, for her, who she is and who she wants to be.
  
  Clear?
  
  Well, in fact, it's clearer than I make it out to be because all the characters are well written and rounded out, and the story flows nice and easy and logically. There's a lack of emotionality that I'm used to finding in stories like this, but never mind; it's an entertaining and well written tale all the same.
• 
  Sarah Sammis

  There are a few glaring errors that have twice stopped me reading in mid sentence. First is the Pledge of Allegiance which is misquoted. The second is the mentioning of the Brady Bunch being on in early summer of 1968. It didn't start airing until September of the next year. There are also some instances of Britishisms being spoken by American characters. None of these things would bother me if the story wasn't priding itself on getting the details right.
  
  I enjoyed the book up until the last twenty pages. I don't particularly like the ending. It felt rushed and forced. I especially didn't like what happened to Perry but then I'm a mother of a kid his age.
  
  I wish the the author hadn't stated that it was 1968. If she had been vaguer about when exactly the book takes place, it would have been better. There are some pop culture references that she gets wrong that could have slid if it didn't have to be the summer of 1968.
• 
  Mary Arkless

  A pleasant enough story narrated by an English woman telling of when she was ten years old. Her father was in the diplomatic corps and was sent to New York. Her mother was used to the genteel high-life and expected to live in a marvellous apartment in NYC. However, the "money was gone," so her father had rented them a house in a small town at the mouth of the Amherst River. This was in 1968. Her mother hated the house and town immediately and basically withdrew to her room, taking prescription pills to calm herself. The father went to work. The daughter was pretty much left to fend for herself. The girl managed to slowly figure out the history of the town now well past its prime and discover how all the residents were linked to each other with a shared past tragedy. The ripples from that tragedy still affected the town in the late 1960s. The girl also learnt that women could be strong, and how to be happy in her own skin.
• 
  Bookguide

  This book is wonderfully quirky with a motley crew of bizarre characters, some of them animals. Dorothy is rather a misfit, an English expat in small-town America, where she makes no real friends until her neighbours' children all disappear for summer camp. Left alone, Dorothy goes exploring and makes friends with the grown-up outsiders of the town, and the remarkable women who run the local zoo. It's a small town, everything and everybody is connected, and when the pompous local mayor decides the zoo needs to close down so a new sport stadium can be built, it's the outsiders, the animals and the strong women who work together to fight.
  
  Humourous, interesting, poignant and strongly feminist, with a fine ear for language and the feelings of the outsider, this book is a reflection of the author herself. Wonderful!
• 
  Maureen Reil

  It was an interesting coming of age yarn told form the point of view of a ten year old girl and mainly takes place over the summer that she spent with her mother and father in a small town in America. The book tells the story of the folk of said area, which has a zoo with a lot of history behind it that charts the connection of the those involved and explains a lot of what women can achieve if they put their minds to it and stick together over what they believe in. The elephant arriving causes the dramatic climax to the plot as the characters frantically fought to save the creature and provide a decent home for it. And personally, I learned a bit about feminism along the way so surely that has to be a good thing, right!
• 
  Karschtl

  Wonderful story about a 10-year-old girl, new in town and no friends to play with (and parents who doesn't really care what she is up to all day long). So she befriends some women who run the local zoo that is on the brink of being closed down. Over the course of the book the past of the zoo and its tenants (and other ppl involved) is revealed, with some surprising facts. One surprising and very sad event I could have done without, I found this really sad beyond words.
  The elephants do get some 'page'-time toward the end of the book, and I loved this part of the story a lot. Would like to see a movie being made from this novel.
• 
  Dormouse

  I liked it and it was sad.
  
  I liked the child protagonist/naarator.
  I didn't like that it took me a bit to remember the difference between two of the women neighbours but I don't know if it is my failing or the book's.
  
  I liked the large house and its descriptions. I liked the zoo, I liked that talking about it, the book mentions the concepts of education and conservation (and it made me sad that they were not around so much then and that the animals were mostly in small depressing cages).
  
  I liked the hopeful ending, that women did things together and made things better.
• 
  Michele Chapman

  I started crushing hard on Sandy Toksvig when I discovered the quiz show QI this past year. She is witty and clever and that shines through in her writing. The book was, in a word, delightful. The book highlights the trials of being different while also celebrating it. If you've ever felt like you're on the outside, a bit out of step from the people around you, and have found a way to be comfortable in your own skin, then this book will speak to childhood weirdo that makes people such interesting adults.
• 
  maggie

  Unlike Beryl Bainbridge, I would not call this a 'funny' book - more shot through with poignant loss. It is very well written with a cast of interesting characters; but apart from Gabriel who seems only admired for his muscles, all the men in the story are weak. It is the women who are emotionally articulate, resourceful and brave. So a 'girls are better than boys' world then. I appreciate the celebration of womanhood, but found the dancing, fluting, poetry fest of the denouement rather over-indulgent.
• 
  Diana

  I enjoyed this book more as i got into it. It started of with a girl finding it difficult adjusting to her new life in a strange new (to her) country, she discovered a group of women living and working at the rundown zoo on the edge of town and slowly the story of all the townsfolk is unraveled. The history of the town and the future of the zoo are intertwined and it seems to take a young girl who doesn't that she fits in to sort the issues out.
• 
  Dark-Draco

  Not for me!
  
  I like Sandi Toksvig as a presenter and comedian - her sense of humour is similar to my own. But somehow I just couldn't find that here. I read 6 chapters and, considering it was supposed to be set in a zoo, the story had barely visited it. In fact, after two descriptions of fairly horrific, casual animal suffering (one involving drowning live spiders and the other the death of an elderly dog), I kind of lost any want to read this further.
• 
  Ellen

  Disappointing... so shallow. The first few chapters were quite hopeful but I realised after that I didn't have a picture of the characters in my head so when the story started happening I was lost as who was who and how they connected together. There were funny sentences but in general the writing was clunky. I didn't feel anything for anyone and it read like the script for a Hollywood comedy movie starring Adam Sandler, which is a movie I would avoid with all of my being.
• 
  Katie Baker

  Took me an age to get into this and still not quite sure what I made of it. The American-ness seemed to be over blown at times and it felt a little like a cliche of America but when the action moved up to the zoo I really started to enjoy it as the characters began to show through and be individuals rather than purely stereotypes. I enjoyed the strong feminist message and the bizarreness gradually grew on me.
• 
  Tasha

  I took a break between heart-breaking books to read this one for comic relief. It's a quick novel about growing up different and finding your place in the world. I--perhaps surprisingly =)--didn't really relate to the protagonist, but found the plot details interesting and laughed out loud a few times.
• 
  Michael Moseley

  The well known comedian Sandi Toksvic childhood exploration of a new life in USA. Not sure how much of this story is autobiography but a very dysfunctional family life put the central character into the fight to save a local New York zoo. Interesting exploration of a range of characters interesting read worth reading.
• 
  Catherine

  I borrowed this book from a colleague who had been going on about what an excellent book it was. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. Takes 8 chapters to get to the main story. Otherwise it's just a long dreary story of unhappy marriages, broken homes and weak women. Not a book I would recommend.