Giraffe by J. M. Ledgard

It should make sense that a book entitled Giraffe's opening chapter is narrated from the perspective of a giraffe, but it doesn't, as it immediately takes the book off course into a bizarre dream like trance. This book, could have been a brilliant short story in the New Yorker or a novella at best. Based on a true story of the largest group of giraffes in captivity, the novel tracks the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their ensconcement in a Czechoslovakian zoo in 1975 to their subsequent slaughter. The underlining story is hugely interesting and the layers of communist bureaucracy are also intriguing to parse through, but the strange long diversions each character takes are off putting.

J. M. Ledgard is a well know correspondent for the Economist, and it is disconcerting that a reporter should choose to tell this story this way. At the end of the day, this is a sad story well told, with an amazing climax, if you some how manage to skip the first half of every chapter.