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The Giraffe Neck A Novel Judith Schalansky Books

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The Giraffe Neck A Novel Judith Schalansky Books

Loved this book. Who writes about the former East Germany these days? It reminded me of my secondairy school in the Netherlands in the fifties and as a retired teacher relate to her love of teaching.


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The Giraffe Neck A Novel Judith Schalansky Books Reviews

The book flap says "The Giraffe's Neck is a resonant novel about the nature of humans and their systems." If that is the case all is lost.

The book's protagonist is Inge Lohmark, a biology teacher in a former East Germany small town.

She is a cold, scornful, cynical character with not one ounce of empathy and no redeeming quality. She seems not to like people at all. She certainly does not like her students; her fellow teachers or her own daughter.

She ruminates
"First they scrap the killing of animals for dissection classes, then they demand more realism!" (Pg.40)
"If you were a victim, you had only yourself to blame." (Pg.64)

Sentences like that are enough to put me off, and that's pretty much the tone of this entire book.

The Giraffe's Neck is used at the end of the book as an analogy of the nature of humans, by which time I could not have cared less.

I am in great need of something light, fun and silly to read after this.
Stopped halfway through. It's a short book and I still couldn't finish it. It took me two weeks to get through 100 pages, because it felt like a dreaded chore. Uninteresting, repetitive, and hard to follow.
The author is German, and much of the novel is a rumination by a burnt-out biology teacher in the former East Germany. Some of it seems off -- I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but the explanation of the giraffe's neck doesn't seem to have much to do with natural selection.

Anyway, the novel is about the elaborate rationales that people can construct to justify a signature moment of terrible behavior, and how in the end that amounts to digging a deeper hole. It takes a reveal at the very end for this to become clear, though. What makes the novel demanding is that much of what the narrator puts forth is uncomfortably on the mark even if it is in the interests of self-deception.

The ending is a tad forced, although its point that there is beauty in the world in spite of the human tragicomedy (more like a comitragedy, as Schalansky sees it) is not a bad idea for closing out an otherwise somber book.

(When will join the 21st C. and let reviewers select by the half-star?
The tale of a teacher nearing the end of her tether as the World as she has known it crumbles around her. It interests me that most reviewers found Frau Lohmark – the narrator, a middle-aged high school biology teacher in the former East Germany – entirely unsympathetic. I found the ruminations on nature, biology and human relationships from an observer in a moribund town, in a dying school with a collapsed marriage and a severed relationship with a daughter who lives far away actually quite moving.

Indeed, Inge Lohmark is an unsympathetic character, but surely only the hardest heart cannot see the longing for Erika – a seemingly plain girl in her class – represents the last grasp at humanity for our narrator. Indeed, her ‘cracking up’ despite the rigidity of her views and biologically determined worldview demonstrates her better qualities.

Perhaps many of those who struggled to enjoy this book might have more actively considered the frame of reference of a woman born, schooled and raised in the East German system and struggling to adapt to rapid change that contradicts everything that she knows professionally, politically and personally. I found it desperately sad and real. Funny at points, ultimately the extent of Frau Lohmark’s alienation is tragic.

To be sure, this is an understated book. The action, tension, emotion and dark humour exists under a surface a melancholic rumination. It positively reeks of decay and the kind of gloom only known by those who’ve felt history has left behind. Any reader that fails to be moved by the reveal at the end of the book and final rallying call to those students left behind has surely missed much.

I should also note the excellent translation by Shaun Whiteside. There was barely a wrong note in capturing a unique voice and tone.
This is only the second time in my life I can remember not finishing a book. The reason was pretty much the same as the first time (Ulysses by James Joyce) the book is incomprehensible. I tried, I really tried for 31% of the book, but in spite of rereading many parts I could not make connections between sentences. And speaking of sentences, most of what I read did not consist of sentences, but rather collections of words, sometime it seemed almost randomly selected.
I reread other reviews to try to understand what the story is. My suspicion (almost always not a good thing to have) is that the story is weak and the confusing language is there to hide the the fact.
The book was originally written in German, so I'm assuming this is not a problem of translation.
This is not a self-published book. How does a serious publishing house like Bloomsbury put this on the market?
The Giraffes Neck, is not what I would regard as a gripping or engaging novel, it is pretty pedestrian with a insight into a personality disorder?
Loved this book. Who writes about the former East Germany these days? It reminded me of my secondairy school in the Netherlands in the fifties and as a retired teacher relate to her love of teaching.