Customer Reviews

Sheepshagger

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There will be inevitable comparisons with Cormac McCarthy, which are well-taken, as the language is certainly evocative of some of McCarthy's earlier works, such as "Child of God" "Outer Dark" and, especially, "Blood Meridian." But Griffiths has his own voice and it is a distinctive one. This is a haunting story , set in modern Wales, concerning a feral young man named Ianto who in his rage against, among other things, yuppies who have usurped his ancestral home, wreaks bloody revenge upon various outsiders. The langauge is incredibly rich in describing nature and his surroundings, certainly over-the-top in its lyrical lushness. The sense of class rage is never far from the surface, as the Welsh underclass is set against rich interlopers, and one can symphatize with their antipathy towards the new arrivals. (There's a fair amount of graphically described violence in the book, and it is certainly not for the squeamish.)
I read this in the UK edition a while ago, and it is the second of three Griffiths novels to come out there. I suspect all three will be soon available here, if they are not already (the others are "Grits" and "Kelly + Victor".) "Sheepshagger" is certainly one of the most impressive modern novels I have read in years, and I'm surprized it was not considered for any major awards. I had the same excitement reading this that I had when I first picked up "Blood Meridian" 15 years ago or so, and I think most readers will also feel the same way.

A blurb on the jacket of Sheepshagger makes a comparison between Mr. Griffiths and Cormac McCarthy. It then continues, to state Griffiths is "his own man."

Maybe.

Griffiths is obviously heavily influenced by McCarthy, not necessarily a bad thing, but with the crawling out of the woodwork plethora of McCarthy imitators being published,
is he just another sheep in the flock?

Like some wide eyed proselyte Griffiths lifts ideas and passages from several McCarthy novels in Sheepshagger; The Shrike from Blood Meridian. Judge Holden's proclamations
on man and nature is turned into (or, in to, as Griffiths habitually disdains compound words in the rather of making up his own sometimes hyphenated ones, sometimes not- another McCarthy trait, the latter) one of Ianto's stoner friends declamation on good versus evil. Lester Ballard's necrophilia, from McCarthy's Child Of God, is evident. The omnipresent work of weathering as in "wind blown stone" used repetitiously by the author. There is more.

That said, Sheepshagger is one powerful novel. While others try to imitate, or duplicate, Griffiths expands. As a McCarthy purist, I found this novel an exteroceptor that stimulated the same primeval substrata of brain that McCarthy's works do.
Once the author puts aside his archaic thesaurus he is capable in a single sentence, or two, of accomplishing the description of feeling and place and objects that other writers ascribe to and do not accomplish with entire novels.
One can also read, in Sheepshagger, a wholly profound passage and find nary one misplaced word. The scenes overcoming their own velocity, their very decrepitation scrawled as if on paper described as if "wind worn" into a stone of the authors own making. The violence unapologetic, real for you to delineate.

I could find fault with this novel, anyone could, but the sheer intelligence of the writing does not allow that. Sheepshagger is a singular work of, at times, almost astounding brilliance. You will find reflections of Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange, besides McCarthy's novels, held within. Go at your own risk. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse, please take extra caution.

Cormac McCarthy was awarded a `MacArthur Genius Award' for his writing. His being.
Mr. Griffiths isn't close to that yet. But, I will be most certainly waiting for his next novel with the hopes that he, like McCarthy, will not fear repetition.

While not a fan of Cormac McCarthy, this Welsh work I enjoyed immensely. Alternating vignettes of natural and inner beauty with harsh violence and chemically-induced ecstasy, Griffith allows Ianto and his mates to emerge here to gain both the sympathy and aversion of the reader. Never straining for sensationalism at the expense of character development, the author sets the figures in a landscape embodying the ancient clash of Welsh native against English invaders while avoiding heavy-handed allegory.

Griffith's accounts of raves, drunken binges, and sheer frustration provide an engrossing narrative. I wondered, when reading, if the characters had previous encounters in other Griffiths novels or stories; there's a lived-in quality they share that I found appealing--as if I was eavesdropping on them rather than viewing them as fictional figures. I don't give five stars easily. I suppose only waiting for more astounding heights for Griffiths to climb prevents five stars for a writer at the start of his career.

I anticipate his other books will gain greater distribution soon; if there's a trilogy, then it deserves serious attention.
Similar to Irvine Walsh, the dialect may slightly put off those wanting a quick dash through its pages; rewarding by its density and wit, this novel kept me eager to return to its pages. Similar to George Saunders' stories, a genuine compassion underlies the sensational surface. Similar to Magnus Mills' novels and Michel Faber's Under the Skin, Griffiths mixes stark settings with nearly symbolic tension overwhelming its visitors.

I was introduced in english young prose by the "Deadkidsongs" by Toby Litt...and, quite frankly, it didn't dissapointed me, like many other young prosaics tend to do, so I kinda approached this book with pre-empashized enthusiasm, expecting to read, at least, book in a artistic height of Deadkidsongs. And surprisingly, I was not dissapointed.
So, why do I praise this book in the mere beggining?
If you start to consider literature as something that shouldn't be just plain fun, thing for which you grab when there's nothing on TV, or every damn CD in the house is broken, than you start to have grasp on things in ways more brilliant and astounding than you ever imagined it existed.
This book represents one world. Many would say, that it represents Wales, and political struggles of it's cittizens, and rustical, narcotic ways of life of its sheepshaggers. And, really it does. But what also does is that it represnts an inside world of a man, which is not man anymore, whose manliness whas denounced by traumatic events in his childhood days, it shows what happens when one grow to quick into a grown up man, and every conotation that is linked with that term.
Consider yourslef warned, that this is not easy book if you really want to dig yourself in one subconscoiusness (I'm sure I didn't spell that right :), you can read it in one afternoon but than you'll just stare blankly in its cover, not comprehending what actually happend...Take time to enjoy this work (I suppose GB slang should provide little difficulty, but I cannot be judge on that, I read it translated), take time to drown yourself into words that speaks beautiful and dark mysteries of life, in a words that are life itself.
2of2 for young english litterature

Not much to add to what's been written... I'd downplay how much this is a novel about "revenge" and class-rage, as some of the editorial remarks seem to make it, tho'. While there are elements of both, and a fierce subtextual current of resentment towards the English presence in Wales, that run thru the book, to reduce the novel to such simplicities -- to sum it up as that and nothing more -- does it a grave injustice; the book is far more ambitious in scope, and one shouldn't ignore that for the sake of a tidy blurb. Time and again in the novel, the violence in it is connected to a singular vision of nature, red in tooth and claw; to a darkness in the universe, drawn in near-mythic terms; and to a history of childhood trauma that the main character, Ianto suffers; all of these are very much apart from his class or his dispossession. This ISN'T primarily a political text... On a quite separate note, I wanted to briefly note one important difference between Niall Griffiths and SHEEPSHAGGER and the novels of Cormac McCarthy. Unlike CHILD OF GOD, the obvious comparison-point (and a relevant one, in talking about this book -- since it is linked not just in terms of the superficial action and elaborate prose it shares with that book, but thematically, on at least a few counts), there are passages in this novel where Griffiths', the reader's, and one of Griffith's Welsh character's hearts are very much moved, are filled with sympathy and compassion for Ianto; where we are asked to understand and forgive his violence, and embrace him regardless of it. (Given the brutality of the murders in the book, and the detail in which they are drawn, this is no small accomplishment). While Lester Ballard is richly human and not treated unsympathetically, there is an absurdity to his figure, as drawn by McCarthy -- there's a level on which CHILD OF GOD comes across as a self-consciously black joke, proposing a rapacious, dim hillbilly necrophiliac as an innocent, and making him a protagonist; while we can understand Ballard's actions, we do so only by virtue of our capacity to find his baser aspects in ourselves, such that CHILD OF GOD stands (sort of) as a lesson in humility, a joke at our own expense as much as Ballard's. I might be going a bit too far here (it's been awhile since I read the book) but there seems to me to be something in it -- CHILD OF GOD, that is -- that borders on the misanthropic -- in a subdued but gleeful way. SHEEPSHAGGER does nothing of the sort; Griffiths compassion is sincere, and his concern is to raise his damaged protagonist to a level on par with any of us -- not to lower us to his basenesses. Don't get me wrong: I greatly admire McCarthy's books, and liked CHILD OF GOD immensely; and it's indeed more IMPORTANT a work than this book, even if only because it stands as the "original" text of dispossession, necrophilia, and near feral humanity. I ended up liking this novel in entirely other ways, for other reasons, however; and whatever one feels about McCarthy or the relationship between CHILD OF GOD and this -- it shouldn't matter in the end, at least not to the decision of whether to read SHEEPSHAGGER or not... People who enjoy McCarthy's books shouldn't be put off with the thought that this is just an imitation; whatever Griffiths "lifts," and his debt is such that he really should've tipped his hat to McCarthy in his acknowledgments, he does so in the service of a unique work with its own merits, that does things CHILD OF GOD doesn't attempt. Those who don't enjoy McCarthy's books, meanwhile, but are interested in reading a surprisingly moving portrait of a damaged, but very human character (and the people and landscape around him, both of which are also important to this work) -- will also find this novel worth their while; it's a good book, a good read, quite compelling. .... On a final note: to be totally pedantic, and split hairs with another reviewer, there is, in fact, ONE misplaced word in the text -- Griffiths slips and uses the non-word "irregardless" at one point. But then, there are also at least two typos in BLOOD MERIDIAN, too.