Customer Reviews

Giraffe: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Those who did not live under Communism will never be able to fully appreciate the difficulty of day-to-day life or the way in which the state destroyed the complete Self - both physical and mental. Ledgard's book is a superb portrait of Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, a time former President Vaclav Havel has said he cannot recall with much clarity because of the complete crushing of society by the government and the Soviet Union following the invasion in 1968. The process known as ``Normalization,'' was anything but. It was a systematic and brutal program to wipe out any resistance to the state and produce a docile population. Normalization divided families, costs thousands their jobs or lives, drove people out of the country and still haunts the people today. Ledgard's book is a dry-eyed and gripping look at a ghastly exercise in Thugology - the mass killing of the largest herd of giraffes outside their natural environment - and a sobering account of a period that is not often explored, especially by the Czechs themselves. Expertly rendered.

If purely fiction Giraffe would be a tragic story, sure to touch our hearts. However, the knowledge that it is based upon an actual incident serves to make Ledgard's strong narrative even more lamentable. This listener was not only saddened but incensed.

On a mild spring day in a small Czechoslovakian town 49 giraffes held in captivity were shot and dismembered. This was the largest herd of giraffes ever confined; twenty-three of them were pregnant. The slaughter was ordered by the communist government, with no explanation then or in time to come. These quiet, graceful animals had been caught in Africa and brought to a zoo.

The story of their capture and eventual massacre, in Ledgard's story, serves as a political parable as seen through the eyes of Emil, who traveled with the animals, Jiri, a shooter hired to kill the giraffes, and the most poignant observer of all, Snehurka, a giraffe cow.

There is much to ponder in Ledgard's well crafted tale, and much to appreciate in the narrative voices who give it life. A twenty year veteran of New York theatre, Jamie Heinlein is an affecting reader, mirroring innocence. Pablo Schreiber, remembered for his film roles in The Manchurian Candidate and Lords of Dogtown, offers a well paced, resonant narration. These two readers are an exemplary example of the richness that can be brought to the written word.

- Gail Cooke

'GIRAFFE: A Novel' is an extraordinary, poetic work, a book by first novelist J.M. Ledgard that relates a tale based on a true incident and makes it seem like a feat of magical realism. The language he uses is staggeringly beautiful, rich in descriptive allusions, rife with political overtones, and filled with compassionate nature that usually comes only with many years of writing. The book may disturb because of the topic, but to miss the exotic pleasure of reading Ledgard would be a tragedy: Ledgard has a gift, and imagination, and all the prerequisites for a successful career in letters.

The story, very briefly, tells of the travels of a group of some fifty giraffes from their native land to a zoo in Czechoslovakia in 1973 and their subsequent slaughter on May Day in 1975. Ledgard wisely names his chapters after the characters involved, beginning chapter one with Snehurka, a giraffe who narrates to us as it is being born and who is to become the head cow of the band of animals being transported. We then meet Emil, a hemodynamicist, who as a scientist accompanies the giraffes on train and barge to their destination, falling under the influence of Snehurka and the wonder of the magnificence of these anatomically bizarre animals. Once the animals are ensconced in the zoo we meet Hus the animal keeper; Amina a sleepwalking girl named after the main character of Bellini's opera `La Sonambula' who works in a Christmas ornament factory and connects with the animals in the zoo - especially the giraffes; Jiri, a sharpshooter whose job it will be to shoot the giraffes once the 'contagion among them' is discovered; Tadeas, a virologist, who assigns Emil with the task of collecting blood samples after the killings; and the various officials of the 'Communist moment' who direct the secret destruction of the giraffes and their disposal. Each of these characters becomes so palpably real (though they are fictitious creations based on the story of those who participated in the actual slaughter) that their interaction is understandable and gains our empathy. No small feat, this, but that is the quality of writing Ledgard gives us.

Ledgard repeats significant phrases such as 'the Communist moment' and 'we are bound together, all of us, by suffering, even more than joy' and mixes these philosophical and political messages with some of the most eloquently beautiful descriptions of the seasons and landscapes of Czechoslovakia ever written. He drives his message of the slaughter home but in a way that makes us feel as though this book is simply a novel and not reportage. The result is a book that contains memorable reading as well as a story that will disturb even the hardest of souls. It is a remarkable novel, all the more so for being a first effort! From his Mahler reference 'Ewig, ewig...' Grady Harp, October 06

Since the synopsis has already been written about by other reviewers, I won't repeat it. However, I'll cast my vote because I want to counter the negative reviews and because I wouldn't want anyone, particularly fans like me of searing, stream-of-consciousness literature, to miss out on the opportunity to read it. I was moved by this book like very few I can remember, and I'm a voracious reader with only two requirements of any book I read: extraordinary language, and a story that deepens my experience in some way of being human. Not all books live up to that promise, of course, but this one does.

There are few books I've read that capture the profound melancholy of a people watching it's rich cultural heritage plowed under by the crushing treads of totalitarianism. This book does that and more: to underscore the fiendish power without a heart is an unspeakable slaughter whose aftershocks I felt for weeks after I finished the book. It made me wonder: what in each of us contributes to preparing the soil for a monster to grow, whether it's Adolph Hitler or a smaller despot closer to home? And how, after a monumental crime is committed, do we assimilate into ourselves the painful lesson so that we do not allow it to happen again? This book is an elegiac fever dream whose language, like a haunting score, carries you aloft on its forbidding current and deposits you at a shore that, although not welcoming, is stunning in its revelation.

if you're looking for a page-turning, plot-driven narrative this is not your novel... but if you're ready to embark on a journey of exploration in human character, filtered through the lens of recent cultural and political history, this is a beautiful and amazing work that you must read... Giraffe allows the reader to experience the "communist moment" through first-person narrative in an engaging array of fascinating human and even inhuman characters... their voices ring true in the same resonant manner as the physical and historic minutiae surrounding the soviet-era Czechoslovakia throughout this tremendous work which transports the reader to another time and place, and as the best literature can, to another being and perspective altogether... a brilliant novel, based on compelling, haunting, and tragic actual events, these characters will stay with you, and your world-view will expand.

If purely fiction Giraffe would be a tragic story, sure to touch our hearts. However, the knowledge that it is based upon an actual incident serves to make Ledgard's strong narrative even more lamentable. This listener was not only saddened but incensed.
On a mild spring day in a small Czechoslovakian town 49 giraffes held in captivity were shot and dismembered. This was the largest herd of giraffes ever confined; twenty-three of them were pregnant. The slaughter was ordered by the communist government, with no explanation then or in time to come. These quiet, graceful animals had been caught in Africa and brought to a zoo.
The story of their capture and eventual massacre, in Ledgard's story, serves as a political parable as seen through the eyes of Emil, who traveled with the animals, Jiri, a shooter hired to kill the giraffes, and the most poignant observer of all, Snehurka, a giraffe cow.

Ledgard's writing style is ambitious, but his execution is very uneven. If the following is meaningful to you, then your opinion may be higher than mine: "One child chases the others, desperately, as though the space between them were a wasteland". Incidentally, this sentence is an observation which has nothing to do with the flow of the novel. Ledgard overworks short sentences and repetition. At the same time, his sustained metaphor of people sleepwalking through life in a deadening totalitarian regime, and his personification of this in the character of Amina, is powerful, although even this is a bit repetitive.

The novel is based on a true incident, and this causes a problem. For literary purpose it would be nice if the slaughter of the giraffes was another capricious act of the government, but it may well have been justified. Still, the whole giraffe story is remarkable, and Ledgard succeeds in making the reader appreciate the majesty, beauty, and sentience of these creatures, so that this novel has some of the resonance of "The Life of Pi". In summary, "Giraffe" has lots to recommend it, but too often it is dull.

I don't know if Mr. Ledgard set out to become a giraffe - vertical, melancholy, far-seeing - but he has succeeded. He writes that it is suffering that unites us, but there is grace as well. Grace in remembering, grace in enduring.

This is a novel about Czechoslovakia and the numbingly oppressive state that made possible the events Ledgard describes. But it is more. It is lyrical, mysterious, and sad. I suspect the author would be flattered to be compared to W. G. Sebald. And it is no stretch to do so. Or to Murakami, and his haunting zoo massacre in "The Wind-uo Bird Chronicle."

But comparisons falter. This book stands on its own. One can't put it down, even as it drags one towards its inevitable conclusion. A brilliant work, of memory recovered and truth revealed.

In 1975, in the midst of the "Communist moment" in Czechoslovakia, the world's largest captive herd of giraffes was destroyed in secret by official decree, slaughtered, and processed into feed for cattle on collective farms. As unlikely as it seems, these brutal facts form the basis for one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.
Many things about Giraffe are unlikely, just as the animal itself. The novel begins with a giraffe relating the experience of her own birth on the African plain. This is as perfect a piece of poetic prose as you are likely to find anywhere in modern fiction. In the second chapter, the same giraffe, now nearly 2 years old, tells of her capture and transport to a seaport, ending with her swaying in harness above the deck of a freighter. This doesn't work as well, given the narrator's use of geo-political designations such as "Czechoslovakians", "East Germans", and "the Indian Ocean". (How would a giraffe in Africa distinguish between a Czechoslovakian and an East German, anyway? And why?) But here ends any quibble I have with the author. Having left Africa, the white-bellied giraffe of the title becomes silent as nature made her, and the rest of the story is told from varying points of view---those of a Czech scientist employed by the government, a young woman who "sleepwalks" through most of her life, a zookeeper, a hunter who must anesthetize himself with alcohol to do what the state has ordered him to do. While they live, and as they die, the Czechoslovakian giraffes have a profound effect on these ordinary people. Reading their story will lift you up, and it will tear you apart. The going up is worth the coming down.

"I am a giraffe, I am about that space a little above the blade, and my bodily intent is to be elevated above all other living things, in defiance of gravity."

I wanted to like this book, but came away disappointed. The premise is very interesting and much of the prose is very good as well. However, there is an emptiness that sets in roughly 2/3 of the way through the novel that never really leaves a reader.