Product Description

Robbed of his ancestral home - a near-derelict hovel in the mountains of west Wales - Ianto pledges revenge on the English yuppies who have turned his grandmother’s cottage into a weekenders’ barbecue party and on all those who have violated the land that is his. This latest act of colonial oppression and desecration triggers his lurid and strange imagination into unspeakable savagery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #204914 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-28
• Released on: 2002-05-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 266 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
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

From Publishers Weekly
Published to critical acclaim last year in the U.K., Sheepshagger, the amazing second novel from Niall Griffiths (Grit), is as raw and unsettling as its title. Ianto is an orphan, raised by his grandmother in the Welsh countryside. Ugly, withdrawn and semiretarded, he is the classic outcast, finding solace first in nature, later in drugs and the company of a few mates. The ramshackle family farm is sold and his fury at his displacement ultimately impels him to murder. Griffiths's prose matches the savage intensity of his protagonist: stoned reminiscences by Ianto's friends are woven with flashbacks (both wondrous and horrible) of Ianto's childhood and the events leading up to the murders, creating a chilling portrait that is nearly mythological in its intensity and pathos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Danny, Marc, Griff, and Llyr spend their time taking as many drugs as they can afford, which they mix with quantities of cheap liquor. On the night of the novel, they are trying to make sense of the murders committed by one of their circle, Ianto. A skinny, inarticulate young man, Ianto has brutally killed three people in the mountains near their home. Welsh author Griffiths (Grits) tells his story in three narrative strands: the profane ruminations of Ianto's mates; flashbacks to the recent events that led up to his murderous, inchoate rampage; and scenes from Ianto's childhood that are by turns glorious and brutal. The tragedy of the young man's life is the tapestry of this novel, woven with brilliant images of nature and the squalid reality of a life in which the only release from despair is drugs and liquor. The novel's profanity and graphic brutality will put off many readers, but the power of the narrative is undeniable. Sheepshagger belongs in most adult fiction collections. Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.