The Cloth Elephant
This is an epic – in several senses – novel of Germany’s decline into war and fascism. The story revolves around an aristocratic family, the von Salomans, their matriarch Frieda (and her great house), her son (a distinguished diplomat) and in turn his son Adam. We are engaged in Adam’s childhood as the boy struggles with his father’s disgrace, war, and the aftermath as the Russians and Americans take their home in turn. This is Adam’s journey as a man. This is epic because you will travel from China and its warlords, to the Lebensborn program, to everything we know about the shock of discovering concentration camps. It is an extraordinary depth of scene setting, and sweeps across history. It is a challenge for any writer to pull this off and shows great imagination.
Readers need to devote time to following the sheer depth of information, and perhaps the novel would be better presented in another way? We have a prologue and then not one epilogue but two. Are they all necessary? The key journey is lost in the structure of the book and the writing style: every sentence is short, the paragraphs are short; ‘his’ occurs three times in three consecutive sentences. People are ‘immaculately-dressed’ or ‘elegantly-dressed’, are ‘tall’ and ‘well-built’. The print size could be larger to make easier reading, but the cover is very good. I would suggest another technical edit to tighten up the narrative, but readers who enjoy getting their teeth into a novel might enjoy this one.
