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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
Review
At first glance, half-wit and fully wild Ianto seems an unlikely candidate for greatness. He sleeps rough, he steals, he takes handfuls of drugs and spends most of his dole money on cider and raves. He's barely capable of stringing a complete sentence together and is unable to grasp even the basics of personal hygiene. In short, Ianto is a dole-scrounging waster with no discernible future. But when he's cast off his grandmother's land and out of his ancestral home, the only legacy he had to call his own, the horrifying past he's never been able or even allowed to cope with seeps into the present. In a swirl of psychotropic drugs and deep, instinctual urges, Ianto makes his fame among his parasitic circle of friends and the quiet, unassuming village he lives on the fringes of. This book is coursing with gritty emotion and the violent climax leaves nothing to the imagination. Yet there is a grim beauty and depth in this harsh Welsh landscape, profound thoughts in the expletive-laden conversations and terrible insights into the nature of humanity itself. This is a novel that demands to be analysed and re-read, as knowledge of Ianto's dark secret lends an additional intensity to the book and highlights the subtle hints and clues scattered throughout. Some may find the dialect difficult, which is why it may benefit from more than one reading - but, as with Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, the reader comes around to the language of Ianto's world. As you become used to the dialect, the cursing not only seems essential, but melts into the background until you hardly notice it. Don't read this book expecting a few hours of light entertainment. This is a deeply disturbing, highly intense and stunningly talented piece of work that will resonate for a long while afterward. Niall Griffiths is a talent to watch and wait for. (Kirkus UK)
Griffiths comes storming out of Wales, much as James Kelman and Irvine Welsh have from Scotland, in an angry, violent, lyrical American debut about a rural killer. The Welsh countryside may be a bleak place where children are conceived through "a knee-tremble in an outhouse," the abandoned lead mine still "sweat[s] its sly venom," and the rugged landscape defeats any attempts to walk upright, but the halfwit orphan Ianto loves it fiercely, the more so after he is dispossessed of his ancestral home. When he grows up to commit horrendous crimes, his former mates-hardly more articulate than he-try to understand how and why, or whether, to "Just fuckin accept-a fact that yer are things in-a world that yew'll never fuckin be able to understand." Their ongoing conversation in dialect is one thread of a three-fold narrative. Italicized sections in simple yet poetic prose offer scenes from Ianto's childhood, with the violence of the natural world stirring and disturbing his sens
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
Review
At first glance, half-wit and fully wild Ianto seems an unlikely candidate for greatness. He sleeps rough, he steals, he takes handfuls of drugs and spends most of his dole money on cider and raves. He's barely capable of stringing a complete sentence together and is unable to grasp even the basics of personal hygiene. In short, Ianto is a dole-scrounging waster with no discernible future. But when he's cast off his grandmother's land and out of his ancestral home, the only legacy he had to call his own, the horrifying past he's never been able or even allowed to cope with seeps into the present. In a swirl of psychotropic drugs and deep, instinctual urges, Ianto makes his fame among his parasitic circle of friends and the quiet, unassuming village he lives on the fringes of. This book is coursing with gritty emotion and the violent climax leaves nothing to the imagination. Yet there is a grim beauty and depth in this harsh Welsh landscape, profound thoughts in the expletive-laden conversations and terrible insights into the nature of humanity itself. This is a novel that demands to be analysed and re-read, as knowledge of Ianto's dark secret lends an additional intensity to the book and highlights the subtle hints and clues scattered throughout. Some may find the dialect difficult, which is why it may benefit from more than one reading - but, as with Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, the reader comes around to the language of Ianto's world. As you become used to the dialect, the cursing not only seems essential, but melts into the background until you hardly notice it. Don't read this book expecting a few hours of light entertainment. This is a deeply disturbing, highly intense and stunningly talented piece of work that will resonate for a long while afterward. Niall Griffiths is a talent to watch and wait for. (Kirkus UK)
Griffiths comes storming out of Wales, much as James Kelman and Irvine Welsh have from Scotland, in an angry, violent, lyrical American debut about a rural killer. The Welsh countryside may be a bleak place where children are conceived through "a knee-tremble in an outhouse," the abandoned lead mine still "sweat[s] its sly venom," and the rugged landscape defeats any attempts to walk upright, but the halfwit orphan Ianto loves it fiercely, the more so after he is dispossessed of his ancestral home. When he grows up to commit horrendous crimes, his former mates-hardly more articulate than he-try to understand how and why, or whether, to "Just fuckin accept-a fact that yer are things in-a world that yew'll never fuckin be able to understand." Their ongoing conversation in dialect is one thread of a three-fold narrative. Italicized sections in simple yet poetic prose offer scenes from Ianto's childhood, with the violence of the natural world stirring and disturbing his sens