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Sheepshagger [Paperback]

Niall Griffiths
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (7 Mar 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099285185
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099285182
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 291,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Niall Griffiths
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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Written in rough, tough and fiercely native prose, Sheepshagger is a coming-of-age ensemble novel about a bunch of promiscuous, disenchanted, druggy Welsh youngsters, growing up in a world from which they feel disconnected, surrounded by a beautiful countryside they struggle to understand. In the middle and somehow pivotal to this motley Celtic crew is Ianto: a genetically unfortunate ne'er-do-well who yet possesses the spiritual centredness the others lack. It is Ianto who relates to the rurality around them: "the lightning blasted blackthorn", the "same soil his forefathers dug in". As a result of the strange, totemic figure he cuts, Ianto manages to hang with the others and become something of a mascot to them, even though they tease him mercilessly about his virginity. The dialogue is vivid and believable, in an expletive-rich Irvine Welsh way. The intervening descriptions are spare and impressive, although they sometimes strain too hard towards lyricism: "he is like something dredged from the harbour long sodden in silt and brine, a being discarnate of mud and stagnant water". The book culminates in a rural cop-chase; however the true poetic essence of the book is its very contemporary take on Welshness. Griffiths' second novel is a modern-day elegy to the put-upon man-of-the-woods, the long-oppressed Celt, the deracinated Taff, the Sheepshagger. --Sean Thomas --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"Haunting and intensely imagined, layered with chilling humour and charged with linguistic energy... a powerful and disturbing novel." - A.L. Kennedy

""Sheepshagger" is never less than compelling; the range of Griffiths's achievement is as exhilarating as the reach of his ambition." - "Guardian"

"The power of Griffiths' language is astounding, steeped in the wild forces of nature that have helped make Ianto what he is, by turns lyrically beautiful and tumultuously violent." - "The Times"

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Sheepshagger 6 Dec 2011
By HuddsOn
Format:Paperback
Much has been made of the importance of Ianto as the first memorable Welsh anti-hero, and yet for me it's the supporting characters who reek of authenticity and make this book unforgettable. I once knew a lad who hailed from Caernarvon, and reading this it was almost like meeting him again - the same combination of hedonistic recklessness and morose cynicism. I can well believe that in every small town in the West of Wales, there's a group of friends who would read Sheepshagger and recognise themselves within minutes.

Ianto's toking- and tripping-buddies perceive him as a semi-mute, antisocial moron, and yet their lifestyles aren't so very different, dominated as they are by thrill-seeking, violence and self-degradation. In one of the three intercut narratives, Ianto's erstwhile mates are huddled in a room together perhaps a year or so after the events of the story, trying to fathom out what turned him into a multiple killer. The irony is, it never occurs to them to ask, "How did WE turn out to be such a bunch of losers?" Lack of opportunity can't explain it - Llyr is a property owner and Marc, we learn, comes from a middle-class family. Perhaps the answer is that they are trapped in, and protected by, a self-referential set of social norms of their own - as long as their conduct is "normal" by their own standards, they never feel the need to justify it.

Another irony is that Ianto, the most aimless and dysfunctional of the entire sorry bunch, is the only one who seems to be capable of generating anger at the injustices he's suffered. As for Llyr, Griff and the other "normal" folk, if they ever feel any discontent with life it never progresses beyond petty xenophobia towards the uber-rich English incomers. They're just too busy getting high and getting laid. It's almost as if apathy and rage are different sides of the same coin.

Many people will be put off by the extremity of the violence, and especially the very distressing sexual abuse scene towards the end. The level of bloodshed and human depravity does at times go beyond what's strictly necessary plot-wise (and in particular I think the sexual abuse element could very well have been left out altogether), but at the same time I feel that if he'd toned down the violence too much, he would have compromised his vision.

This book is bleak but not hopeless, and above all it does not seek to normalise violence. It may not offer much hope of creating a better world, but one is left with the feeling that the world would be a better place if more people were like Niall Griffiths.
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9 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
By the time I had finished this book, I felt that I had witnessed some of the bleakest possible lives. None of the characters seemed to have any direction in their lives, getting relentlessly smashed on booze and a variety of drugs. Their behaviour is at the best anti-social, and at the worst actively ruining the lives of others around them with horrific and graphic violence. And they don't even seem to enjoy getting stoned.

And then the writing is over-elaborate, long detailed sentences overflowing with similes, the sentences bursting with adjectives like popcorn in a cinema bucket; looks grand but has little taste.

Yet I couldn't put the book down. I read it in 2 days (skipping some of the popcorn). After finishing it, I threw the book away, not wanting to inflict the depression on anyone else.
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9 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
A fantastic novel, even exceeding the feat that was Grits. The novel was even more poignant to read given the current controversy over the release of Jamie Bulger's killers. Who is worse; the criminal who commits the atroscity or the vigilantes who jump on the cause as an excuse for further violence? I loved this book as much as I loved the last Griffiths wrote...
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