Many thanks to sharp-eyed commenter Horatio, who disagreed with my choice of reviews for Giraffe. Each acknowledged the depth of the story but discredited the stylization of Ledgard's prose. However, Horatio believes they were an "unfair reflection" of a book that is "brave, fiercely imaginative, and stunningly beautiful." As a result, he has pointed us to a pair of more favorable reviews which concentrate on the powerful emotions drawn out by the massacre of the herd.
Library Journal - "Fall Editors' Picks"
Watchtowers of the grasslands, the far-seeing creatures that other animals gather around to catch any sign of unease, giraffes would seem emblematically to be awake. That may have been their downfall. In the novel, when the secret police necklace a small-town zoo, telling everyone involved that “this night has never happened,” the giraffes are evidently being exterminated because they carry a contagion seen as a threat to national security. The contagion of freedom, perhaps? Expert at nailing doublespeak—the giraffes drug in from Africa are said to be migrating and, in a send-up of Socialist engineering, will constitute a new subspecies—Ledgard finally turns tables on the regime, using its own language to reveal the horrific consequences of extreme politics in any form. Yet he does not judge his characters, and his giraffes remain captured but uncapturable in their lofty dignity, “the opposite end of anthropomorphism from Mickey Mouse,” as he surmises correctly. Ultimately, Ledgard leaves us pondering but imbued with a powerful desire to remain engaged—like any good novelist, serving as a watchtower of our culture.
The Independent - "Communism gets it in the neck from a tall story about giraffes"
We live in the copywriters' moment. A jacket blurb these days tends to reveal two-thirds of any plot. In Giraffe, the entire narrative is encapsulated on the inside flap. That Ledgard still manages a gradual build-up of tension is evidence of his storyteller's skill. He does it by installing a number of different narrators and having them pass the storytelling baton, starting with Snehurka, the giraffes' protagonist, and moving on to Emil and others including Jiri, a sharpshooter....
The inevitable bloody showdown, when all the narrators come together and retell the mayhem, is a tour de force, a fitting climax to a superb novel that is filled with compassion, yet never sentimental. I'm going to stick my neck out and call it a masterpiece.
Our discussion of J.M. Ledgard's Giraffe
