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A review by nina_reads_books
Mammoth by Chris Flynn
3.0
Mammoth by Chris Flynn is a different, funny and imaginative book. It is narrated by a 13,000 year old mammoth called Mammut – wait what? Yep Mammut is a fossil and tells his story to a bunch of other fossils while they are waiting to be sold at auction. In this story once the bones or fossils of an animal are unearthed somehow they can begin to remember their lives and also what happened to them after being dug up. It also allows them to communicate with other fossils through telepathy. Weird but it does work.
Mammut’s bones were found in the past couple of hundred years and he tells the other fossils the story of his death and what happened to his fossilised remains after he was dug up. He is interrupted constantly by his fellow fossils a tyrannosaurus, a pterodactyl and others. Each have snippets of stories to tell and speak in different ways depending upon when they were dug up and which humans they have listed to since. The tyrannosaurus speaks like a teenager since he has only been dug up for sixteen years!
This was a somewhat bizarre way to approach a book but Flynn has managed to pull it off. The dialogue back and forth is interesting, though at times I felt the narration of Mammut dragged a little too slowly for my liking. There was also no speaking punctuation which I have enjoyed in other books but found a little confusing in Mammoth. It was hard at times to work out who was speaking – especially when it was one of the characters other than Mammut who had a definite “voice”. Overall though the approach to the narration works. The humour in the book is sarcastic and dry and there was some very funny moments. References to the size of the tyrannosaurus’s hands springs to mind!
Throughout Mammut’s story there is an undercurrent of unease about the way humans have impacted the natural world. By telling us what has happened to the mammoth’s bones over time we see a view of the state of the planet that is uncomfortable. Despite bearing witness to the environmental impacts of humans, Mammoth does though leave us with a glimmer of hope. It was a completely original and quite quirky book.
Mammut’s bones were found in the past couple of hundred years and he tells the other fossils the story of his death and what happened to his fossilised remains after he was dug up. He is interrupted constantly by his fellow fossils a tyrannosaurus, a pterodactyl and others. Each have snippets of stories to tell and speak in different ways depending upon when they were dug up and which humans they have listed to since. The tyrannosaurus speaks like a teenager since he has only been dug up for sixteen years!
This was a somewhat bizarre way to approach a book but Flynn has managed to pull it off. The dialogue back and forth is interesting, though at times I felt the narration of Mammut dragged a little too slowly for my liking. There was also no speaking punctuation which I have enjoyed in other books but found a little confusing in Mammoth. It was hard at times to work out who was speaking – especially when it was one of the characters other than Mammut who had a definite “voice”. Overall though the approach to the narration works. The humour in the book is sarcastic and dry and there was some very funny moments. References to the size of the tyrannosaurus’s hands springs to mind!
Throughout Mammut’s story there is an undercurrent of unease about the way humans have impacted the natural world. By telling us what has happened to the mammoth’s bones over time we see a view of the state of the planet that is uncomfortable. Despite bearing witness to the environmental impacts of humans, Mammoth does though leave us with a glimmer of hope. It was a completely original and quite quirky book.