An Elephant in the Garden

By: Michael Morpurgo / Narrated By: Fiona Clarke

Length: 4 hrs and 18 mins

What happens when your Mom saves an elephant in the midst of war?

16-year old Elizabeth lives with her mother and brother in Dresden. It’s 1944, and her father is in the German army, fighting on the eastern front. Mom works at the Dresden zoo, and with the Allies coming ever closer, the decree has finally been handed down: Should the Allies bomb Dresden, ALL animals in the zoo will be killed lest they be able to leave their enclosures, compromised by bombs, and enter the city proper, possibly harming the populace.

Lizzie’s mother can’t stand this, especially not for her favorite animal there, Marlene, an orphaned elephant she’s grown to love. Somehow, she talks her way into being able to keep Marlene at her home, in the backyard, raising her as much as she raises her own two human children. Unfortunately, Dresden is indeed ultimately bombed, and the three humans have to flee the burning city with Marlene in tow.

An Elephant in the Garden is their story of escape, and of caring for the young elephant who loves them as much as they love her. It’s a sweet story, as any Michael Morpurgo book is (He is, after all, the author of War Horse!), and I really came to care about Lizzie and her family. The story is told through elderly Lizzie, reminiscing to her caretaker and her son in a nursing home. Sometimes when authors do this, the story is unbelievable because it doesn’t sound like a person’s normal speech, but here, Lizzie’s “voice” and memories are quite believable. You do feel that you’re listening to an elderly person reliving the past.

Fiona Clarke does an excellent job with carrying off the German accent for most of the audiobook, but then again, I’m not German, so I can’t totally tell you if she does it well (Sometimes when Europeans do American accents it drives me nuts cuz it makes it sound as though everybody’s from the South or from Texas). She can’t do a Canadian accent, however, as in the RAF pilot from Canada the family befriends after he does them a great service. Still and all, I very much felt the fear, the sadness, the regret, the joy that Morpurgo wrote into his story.

This is a really sweet and tender audiobook, and at only slightly more than 4 hours, it’s a pretty easy One-Day Listen. Or maybe that’s just me and my INCREDIBLY flexible schedule. I liked doing it in a day, at any rate, because I’m not into Delayed Gratification.

So perhaps you’ll listen to it in a day, or maybe you’ll take some extra time to simply enjoy the ride.

The ride on the back of an elephant named Marlene…