{"id":680,"date":"2012-09-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T20:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=680"},"modified":"2024-12-31T17:11:35","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T04:11:35","slug":"the-elephant-keepers-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2012\/09\/06\/the-elephant-keepers-children\/","title":{"rendered":"The Elephant Keepers&#8217; Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Peter H\u00f8eg<\/strong>, <strong>translated by Martin Aitkin<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Random House<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, September 6th 2012<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Peter H\u00f8eg\u2019s latest novel, <em>The Elephant Keepers\u2019 Children<\/em>, is a wonderfully madcap mixture of action, adventure, and existential philosophy.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Peter and Tilte live on the tiny Danish island of Fin\u00f8 where their father is the local pastor and their mother the official church organist. The children are only too aware of the fact that their parents are far from responsible adults; for years they have been manufacturing \u2018miracles\u2019 as much for fame and profit as to build their congregation, but when they go missing en route to a holiday in the Canary Islands it becomes apparent that they are involved in a much larger and more audacious scam than ever before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Aided and abetted by a colourful collection of local identities, Peter, Tilte and their dog, Basker, set out to find their errant progenitors before they can put their plan into action.\u00a0 Matters are complicated by the fact they are themselves pursued by political, religious and psychiatric authorities and their misanthropic headmaster, the wonderfully named Alexander Flounderblood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The narrator, Peter, intersperses his description of events with his own idiosyncratic theories on emotional and spiritual freedom, adding an additional dimension to already convoluted plot. Hugely entertaining and extremely funny, <em>The Elephant Keepers\u2019 Children <\/em>is the perfect antidote to the ills of the everyday world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter H\u00f8eg, translated by Martin Aitkin<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review September 6th 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[153,370,18,173],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-153","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-peter-hoeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}