Jim Giraffe [Paperback]

"This is the best book about a morally reprehensible ghost giraffe I've ever read. Hilarious, filthy, and insane, Jim Giraffe is relentlessly wonderful."
--Dan Rhodes
"A brilliant, funny, unforgettable book, one that explodes taboos...in a way that's fresh and fearless....It's extremely hard to analyse or describe the magic of this extraordinary work"
--"The Independent
"Jim Giraffe is a work from the uppermost echelon of imagination, a twisting, supercharged affront to the mundane; King masterfully juggles all we hold dear before dousing it in napalm and setting it alight in this liberating, free-spirited book -- read it and feel the wind through you hair (then fit a padlock to your wardrobe!)."
--D.B.C. Pierre, author of Vernon God Little
"Daren King is a genius and Jim Giraffe is a masterpiece."
--Matt Thorne
"King has one of the most imaginative and unique voices around."
--"Esquire

‘A sharp, funny, exquisitely well written novel.’

'King's smutty, surreal picaresque provides the missing, and heretofore unsought, link between Carry On and Monty Python'

'Jim Giraffe will have you wheezing with laughter after each increasingly ludicrous turn.'

'King has one of the most imaginative and unique voices around.'

Scott Spectrum is being haunted by a ghost giraffe called Jim. Scott thinks he is the man who has everything - high-speed internet connection, high-tech armchair, alien-shaped slippers, and a beautiful wife. But according to Jim, Scott's days are numbered.

The eagerly awaited second novel from the highly praised author of Boxy an Star

Daren King was born in 1972 in Harlow, Essex. He was educated at Bath Spa University College, Bath, where he graduated in Creative Studies. Boxy an Star, his first novel, was shortlisted for the 1999 Guardian First Book Award. Jim Giraffe is his second novel.

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I have of late been visited by a ghost giraffe. He steps out nightly from the wardrobe, the only item of furniture tall enough to house him, and paces the room in long looming strides, sometimes with a pair of underpants on his head, sometimes not, and stops between my wife's bed and mine.

He began as a shapeless glow, as though someone had rigged up a strip light in the wardrobe and partially opened the door. Several nights later, a leg emerged, bony and long. Followed by three others.

Then, last night, I buttoned up my moon-coloured boxer shorts, stepped into my alien-shaped slippers, passed beneath the giraffe's legs and walked down the stairs to the kitchen, where I made myself a mug of cocoa. On my return I found him still there, looking a tad peeved. I kicked off my alien-shaped slippers and sat on the bed. He put his face close to mine, so close that I could smell the leaves on his breath, fresh leaves from the very tops of the trees, and spoke. Tomorrow, he said, I will visit you during the day. Your wife will be polishing the sideboard. You will have set up a topload video, and I will play you a tape. When I protested that our video was frontload, he explained that the tape was enchanted and was not compatible with some of the newer machines.

I take the afternoon off work, borrow an old silver-coloured video player from my parents, untangle the cables and plug it in. I keep expecting my wife to ask what I am up to, but she is busy polishing the sideboard, just as the giraffe had said. And here he comes now, through the patio doors, without even wiping his hoofs, a videotape clenched between his teeth. He opens his mouth, drops the tape into my hands, and says: 'All right, mate?'

'Yes,' I say icily, 'fine.'

'Not so scary in the day, am I.'

'And what makes you think you were scary during the night?'

'You were scared stiff first time you saw me.'

'No I wasn't.'

'You hid under the duvet, you old lamer.'

'I'm not old,' I say, straightening my top-of-the-range long-range spectacles. 'I'm twenty-eight.'

'Twenty-nine next birthday. Then thirty. If you make it.'

'What a grim thought. Not my making it,' I add quickly. 'The suggestion that I might not make it. Either way, it was a horrible thing to say.'

'Plenty more where that came from.'

'So I take it you haven't descended from the heavens to cheer me up.'

'I'm here to spook you, give you the creeps.'

'Well, you're going the wrong way about it. Assuming an earthly form, you got that bit right. But not as a giraffe.'

'Always been a giraffe,' the giraffe says. 'Wouldn't know how to be anything else.'

'Then if you must insist on haunting people, you should do it back in the jungle where you belong.'

He wrinkles his nose when I say this, that long yellow nose, and says: 'I'll tell you one thing, I'm beginning to wish I'd stayed in the wardrobe. You were scared when I was in the wardrobe.'

'Do you mind. I happen to be fearless.'

'Dickless.'

'That is neither accurate nor fair,' I say in my genitalia's defence. 'Do you know what I do for a living?'

'Surprise me.'

'Head Script Writer, Science Fiction Channel.'

'A writer, eh. Well, if you're so good with words, how come all that time I was in the wardrobe, you never even said hello?'

'You're a giraffe,' I say sensibly. 'Had I known you could speak-'

'If I couldn't speak, there'd be no point me coming here.'

'You sound like you're on some sort of mission.'

'Wouldn't have bothered descending from the heavens,' the giraffe says, 'if I didn't have something big to say.'

'Then get on with it, and get out.'

'Not yet. But believe me, it's heavy shit.'

'Ready when you are,' I say, settling into my high-tech armchair.

The giraffe just flares his nostrils, shakes his head. 'Don't feel like it.'

I rise from the chair. 'Then let's start with something easy. The name is Spectrum. Scott Spectrum.'

'Jim.'

'Nice to meet you, Jim,' I say, shaking his right front hoof. 'So tell me. How does it feel, Jim, to be a freak?'

'Eh?'

'There can't be many ghost giraffes stalking the earth.'

'Giraffes die too, you know.'

'All that lives must die,' I recite, 'passing through nature to eternity.'

The giraffe smiles when I say this. 'None of us is getting any younger.'

'Come again?'

'Well, Spec, it's like you said. All that lives must snuff it-'

'Is that where this is leading? You're here to remind me of my mortality?'

'Bingo.'

'With each passing year I grow closer to the grave. Then, when old and withered-'

'Steady. You're getting soppy, not to mention optimistic.'

'Middle-aged then, with all my imperfections on my head.'

'On the bog, your head in a porn mag.'

'Oh, I don't read pornography, Jim.'

'You should, while you've still got the chance.'

'So it's imminent then.'

'More or less, yeah.'

I just sit here, enjoying my high-tech armchair, recollecting a conversation from the previous night. I was watching television, a time-travel show, and my wife was watching the clock. She asked me why I never speak, and I said nothing.

'Cheer up, Spec. You're better off out of it. I mean, face it, what have you got to live for?'

'I assume you are being ironic. You happen to be looking at the man who has everything. High-speed internet connection. Beautiful wife-'

'Who needs a good seeing-to.'

'A good what?'

The giraffe winks, and the penny drops.

'Oh, you mean sex. Continence has no interest in it.'

The giraffe laughs. 'Continence? Continence Spectrum?'

'It's a beautiful name,' I say in the name's defence.