Beryl Young,
Follow the Elephant
Ronsdale Press, 2010.

Rating: G-E*

When thirteen-year old Ben Leeson is consumed with grief following the untimely death of his father from lung cancer, his paternal grandmother hijacks him on a trip to India to search for her long lost Indian pen pal, Shanti. Gran and Ben leave behind his mother and sister in Vancouver and embark on a journey that provides more than either Ben or his grandmother have bargained for.

While the beginning of the story is a little heavy handed and somewhat didactic in how it deals with Ben’s father’s death, it makes a remarkable right turn into a very good story filled with the sights and sounds of modern day India as Ben and Gran search for clues regarding the whereabouts of the long lost pen pal.

Beryl Young delivers the culture clash between east and west with panache and humor. She has a well developed sense of the absurd. However, Gran is no "Auntie Mame" and the dialogue between grandmother and grandson often seems trite, with resolutions to problems too obvious. Gran is portrayed as more needy than she deserves, and Ben is made to be more noble than he is. With a little more attention the two characters would have felt more real.

However, what Young lacks in effective characterization, she more than makes up with a seat of the pants adventure waltzing across the great Indian sub-continent - any reader of any age would yearn to go to India and experience it all.

Thematic Links: India; Grief; Grandparents

Anne Letain
Vol. 15, number 4
April 2010

*Rating System:
E - Excellent, enduring, everyone should see it!
G - Good, even great at times, generally useful!
A - Average, all right, has its applications.
P - Problematic, puzzling, poorly presented.