To be honest, I'm not even halfway through with the book and I don't know if I'll be able to finish it. Though the language is beautiful, it's also rather deadening. It's almost as if the author is trying too hard to sound beautiful and "poetic."
Maybe when I'm less busy with work, I can pick it up and wrap my whole brain around it rather than the 1/4 that is currently devoted to entertainment.

enygma | September 24, 2007 6:18 PM

Enygma, I can certainly relate. The language absolutely killed this book for me. At first, I didn't mind it so much but it became increasingly annoying the further I got into it. "Deadening" is a much better adjective than "beautiful" because I kept wanting to put it out of my misery.

Ana, as I read, I kept thinking that this book was trying to be something other then a book about giraffes. None of the characters felt like real people to me, the conversations seemed unauthentic, and nothing in the story was much of a surprise.
Maybe I missed the significance of much of it since I had a hard time reading it. Somehow, I feel like some authors do things like use beautiful language or symbolism to make up for bad storytelling. But here's the thing: a book about killing an entire herd of majestic giraffes based on paranoia shouldn't be a bad story.

I don't know. I really wanted to like this book but I feel like lots of other issues kept me from it.

marydell | September 25, 2007 11:05 AM

I agree with you both. The language did keep me from reading. What mostly bothered me was that it seemed like every character had the same poetic voice. There was no difference in their way of expressing their thoughts. The only character that stood out to me was the professor at the secret laboratory. I can't remember his name. Well, actually, at the end of the novel, the butcher stood out most, now that I think about it. He was so different from everyone else. Somehow I don't understand how the hunter was so poetic.

I did manage to finish it. Mary, did you finish it? The "action" part of the novel was the most interesting. This is going to sound bad, but I liked the description of the entire event, how the giraffes went, three by three.

I'm still trying to figure out the book as a whole. The end was total crap. Why was there a need to add a passage that takes place in the present? What happened in that chapter was predictable.

There were some points that I wanted to address, but I'll do that when I have more time and I make more sense about the story as a whole. Like you said, Mary, a book about killing giraffes based on paranoia shouldn't be a bad story. The concept was good, it was there. But what happened?

By the way, I ended up hating Emil towards the end. But more on that later.

ana | September 25, 2007 1:34 PM

I did manage to finish it, but I have to admit that I started skimming in order to avoid the aggravating language and get to the ending quicky. I've also read two new books since Giraffe, so I've already forgotten some of what happened. I'm going to go back into my copy to see who the professor is.

I know what you mean about every character using the same poetic language. Early on, I remember thinking that the sailor who told the story about the mermaid sounded exactly like Emil. Could the butcher have stood out, though, because he was the only one who wasn't a Communist?

At the end, when they start exterminating the giraffes, it did get better because the pace started to pick up. Maybe it has something to do with the chapters being broken down into smaller chunks, but I still thought the language was annoying.

marydell | September 26, 2007 4:18 PM

Hmm, I don't know that everyone else was a "true" communist. That's what was confusing about the characters in a sense. I don't know if you remember, but the Sharpshooter was the only character (that narrated in the story) that openly admitted to being a communist. I got the notion that Emil and Amina both disliked what had happened to their country. Emil, in especial, seemed to reminisce a Czechoslovakia before communism. The professor, from the secret laboratory, didn't like what he did. He was an underground subvervise, at most. What I meant by the butcher and the professor standing out was the languaged they both used, more so the butcher than everyone else. Which makes me wonder if his language was different because he was a butcher, assumingly not educated nor cultured. So then, was everyone else, including the sharpshooter, cultured and educated? We get glimpses of that because Amina is always talking about the opera and Emil made continuous references to literature. I'm not sure about the sharpshooter.

The pace picked up surprisingly quickly when they started exterminating the giraffes. I remember thinking through the middle of the book, when they were still transporting the giraffes on the vessel, "When will we to the important part?" But I don't know, I wonder if the way the book was written was on purpose? I can't help but think that the author knew was he was doing, even though it discouraging in finishing the book.

Obviously, the best part of the book was the end (before the very, very end). The chapters were broken up into different characters, so we got a look at different perspectives of what was happening. Which is what made me realize that Emil was a untrustworthy narrator. I was tricked into thinking he cared about the giraffes and that he wanted to get back the Czechoslovakia pre-communism, but he just stood by. There wasn't much he could do, besides stand in the way and get shot to death, but his thoughts did not reveal to us that he didn't want this to happen. His visit to the professor at the secret lab also revealed his true character. When the professor describes the encounter, you realized that Emil presented himself in a different fashion from his narration--arrogant.

I am aware that given the situation and living under that kind of regime, it is hard to speak out, but the actions of each character was confusing. At least in their thoughts, the characters I most thought would feel horrible about what happened didn't show it. I was surprised and touched that the Sharpshooter was the most sympathetic and the most affected by the events. Amina was a little annoying to me. I only liked to read her parts so that I could learn more about the Giraffe house keeper--who mysteriously disappeared...

There were some things I definitely liked about the novel. The language started out nicely at first, then it got really annoying. I didn't understand why we were introduced to some of the terciary characters at first, like Amina and the sharpshooter. Well, what do you know, they were directly involved in the event. I still don't understand Amina's role or even the butcher's or the professor's. That Snehurka was given a couple of chapters to narrate humanized her and only made her murder even more touching and hard to read/visualize.

I kept comparing Giraffe with The Dew Breaker because of the way it was written. At least the Dew Breaker didn't have a cheesy ending, like the journalist that interviewed the butcher.

If there's anything I got out of this book is that I'll never look at a giraffe in the same way.

ana | September 27, 2007 11:44 AM

Even though most of the characters didn't believe, I thought that everyone—in outward appearances, at least—was a Communist because they had to be. When Emil was hired to travel with the giraffes, the shipping director makes him speak Russian, asks him a bunch of word association questions about Communism, and sets him up with a cover story. He just goes along with it. Even though the sharpshooter admits to it, he is only a Communist because he wants to stay in the forest and hunt. Amina talks about sleepwalking, and I think that best describes what's going on with most of the characters. They just sleepwalk through their lives for self-preservation and moments of getting what they want.

Also, Snehurka says of giraffes, "We are sleepwalking beasts. Our eyelids flutter but remain open. Our teeth grind in fits of bruxism. We push up. We walk with unfocused eyes through the barn (p. 159)." So this makes me wonder if the giraffes are supposed to be some kind of metaphor for the human characters. The virus, which might have either been "recently introduced" or "dormant for some years" (Emil p. 214), could represent anti-Communist thoughts while the mass extermination could represent killing these thoughts in the humans.

At the same time, the viral outbreak and immediate reaction toward extermination reminded me of the mad cow disease scare. Since mad cow was all over the news when it happened, I wonder if the author had it in mind when writing this book. Emil mentioned having to inform international authorities and how the borders would be closed for years and trade shutting down for fear of it spreading to livestock. The giraffe plague was hushed up to avoid all of this, but didn't something similar happen to the cattle trade in Britain when mad cow broke out?

Jumping to the ending, you mentioning The Dew Breaker now makes me think that the butcher is one of the other characters in the book. You know how the artist's father used to torture people for Papa Doc? Could the butcher have been the giraffe house keeper or Emil or the sharpshooter?

I totally agree with you, Ana, about how the language got annoying. I felt like it got in the way of telling a good story, which should have been a really good story. The author, I think, tried too hard to include a lot of symbolism and metaphor rather than thinking enough about keeping hold of the reader. At least in The Dew Breaker Danticat switched around the writing style depending on which character was talking.

marydell | September 30, 2007 9:07 AM