I discovered ‘Three Bags full’ by Leonie Swann during one of my random browsing sessions at the bookshop. I thought I will read it for German Literature Month, which is hosted this month. I did a readathon yesterday and finished the book. This is what I think.What I thinkGlennkill is a village and a meadow in Ireland. One morning the sheep which graze there discover that their shepherd, George Glenn, is dead, with a spade driven through his body. They want to find out who killed their beloved shepherd. Soon the village people discover the shepherd’s body. And the police come in and investigations start. But nobody is able to find anything. Meanwhile, the sheep, led by the intelligent Miss Maple (named after you-know-who), start their own process of detection. They use their sharp sheep intelligence and soon they discover interesting things about the village and the people who live there and about their shepherd George. How they find the killer of George and what happens in the end form the rest of the story.I found ‘Three Bags Full’ interesting because the whole story is told from the sheep’s point of view. Miss Maple is the smartest among the sheep and she leads the investigation. Mopple the Whale accompanies her because he is the one who has the best memory. Othello the black ram joins in too, because he is courageous. Other sheep join in at different times – Maude and Heather and Rameses and Cloud and Zora and Sir Ritchfield and Cordelia. Even a lamb which doesn’t have a name joins in at times. There is also a mysterious sheep called Melmoth which joins in after a while and contributes to the investigation with his intelligence and his worldly experience. I liked the book for some of the descriptions which Leonie Swann gives. Not long ones. But short, one sentence or one phrase descriptions. Like this :They were standing on the cliffs between the watery-blue sky and the sky-blue sea.And this :The sea looked as if it had been licked clean, blue and clear and smooth…And this :A gentle breeze softly fanned their fears away…And this :The horizon was rosy as a March lamb’s nuzzle now.And this :…their tension melted away like mist.And this :A hot wind was blowing through his shaggy fleece, making the wool ripple like trembling gray flames.And this :Out there dark had fallen. Dense, velvety night air, incredibly sweet and clear, streamed into his nostrils.And this :When Melmoth told them something, it was like a strange wind caressing their faces, a wind spiced with vague presentiments and mysterious scents.The mystery when it was resolved wasn’t so surprising, but the way the sheep went about resolving the mystery was delightful and fascinating. On the way, the author talks, through the sheep’s voices, about the art and science of detection and how an author can nudge readers in a particular direction by giving false clues. For example, there is a passage which goes like this :The sheep knew what investigating meant; they had heard the word in the detective story. During investigations the detective delves into other people’s business and gets into difficulties.In another place Miss Maple says this about suspects :“Have you noticed something? A little while ago no one would have thought it of Gabriel, because we liked him. And now he’s a suspect, because we don’t like him anymore. Perhaps we’re making a mistake. The murderer could be someone we like.”In another place she says this about how things may not perfectly fit in a murder puzzle :“…perhaps not everything has to fit. Perhaps it’s a mistake to think that everything always has to fit together. In that detective story it was all supposed to fit, and then it got tangled up, and George threw the book away. Perhaps the answer is that many things simply don’t fit. Things that we think are connected, but really they don’t have anything to do with each other.”There were many delightful passages in the story. Some of my favourites : She thought of the day when she brought her first lamb into the world, she thought of the pain, and the anxiety later, because the lamb had been brown as earth, even after she had spent ages carefully licking the blood off his coat. Brown as earth, with a black face. Later the brown would turn a woolly white, but Zora wasn’t to know that at the time. She had wondered why she was the only sheep in the meadow not to have had a white lamb. But then the lamb had bleated, tiny and brown as he was, and he had a more beautiful voice than any of the other lambs. He had smelled good too. And Zora knew she would defend him against the whole world, whether or not he was the brown color of earth.What do the sheep do in the flock? They grazed and rested. What would he do without a flock? Graze and rest, of course. Anything else was just imagination.“A flock of sheep can be herded because you know something about them. You know they’ll stay together. They’ll do all they can to stay together. That’s why you can herd them. You can’t herd a single sheep on its own. A sheep on its own is unpredictable. Sometimes being alone is an advantage.” What helped him was the wind. For the wind brought with it – who knew from where? – a leaf, and laid it carefully in front of Othello’s hooves. A golden leaf. Autumn gold. Swallow-flying time. The time of scents, mating time. Once again he turned back to the meadow, where Mopple, Maple, Zora, and Cloud were gazing reverently at a gray cloud. But he saw none of them. What he saw, scented, felt with all seven senses and several brand-new autumn senses too, were three dazzling beauties with white fleeces and intoxicating scents. And a rival, young and strong but inexperienced.I enjoyed reading ‘Three Bags Full’. One of my favourite lines from the book’s blurb went like this – “It’s…as if Agatha Christie had rewritten The Wind in the Willows…” Isn’t that perfectly put? If you like cozy mysteries with animal characters, you will like ‘Three Bags Full’. Have you read ‘Three Bags Full’? What do you think about it?
*4.5*Three Bags Full is a delightfully clever murder mystery, filled with endearing characters, sinister activities, and astoundingly thoughtful observations.Leonie Swann's humorous tale of determined, inquisitive sheep is striking in many ways. Lovely in its cadence and poetic meanderings, the language alone is enthralling. The descriptions of sea and sky, air and earth, are all so vivid. There’s a wonderful flow to the text, tripping lightly yet assuredly through the sheep’s thoughts until you begin to forget they’re farm animals at all. Until they start grazing again, that is.Upon finding their shepherd, George, murdered in their meadow, the sheep decide they must get to the bottom of such wolfish behaviour. They owe it to George, and to themselves, to see justice done.What follows is a close examination of the humans surrounding them. Most of the hilarity comes from the flock’s complete misunderstanding of people’s conversations. (The sheep often take things quite literally.) And yet, their observations of body language and emotional undertones are astoundingly spot-on. No fools, these sheep. Their only obstacle is inexperience.As they discover more about their shepherd and his community, they are by turns excited, appalled, and bewildered. Seeing humans through their sheepy filter, the reader begins to understand that some concepts defy translation. Religion becomes a particular focus. Pared down to overheard words and shocking imagery, it’s a frightful thing. Why, God is downright suspicious! (I couldn’t agree more.)There are further philosophical points made - and many practical ones, too: the daunting vastness of the abyss, the importance of sticking to the flock, the rare advantages of being alone, and the rewards of conquering fears and controlling anger. Apparently chewing the cud lends itself to a great deal of pondering.The pondering pays off. Three Bags Full ends on a note of bittersweet triumph. With secrets revealed and big changes to come, the flock stands on a precipice - not knowing whether the future holds terrors or delights. But they have each other, and so they can handle anything. They are, after all, rather clever sheep.Now if only they'd translate the second book into English!
What do You think about Three Bags Full (2007)?
A shepherd is murdered and it's up to the flock to find out whodunnit. Lead by the intrepid Miss Maple, a delightful cast of sheep characters put their fluffy, fleece heads together to crack the case.As a murder mystery, this book isn't that entertaining, but as a parody of the Miss Marple books, it is fantastic. Each sheep in the flock has a distinct character that gives it a unique ability to contribute to the case (these traits are listed in the front of the book with the character, just like the old Christie books). Only by working together are their powers combined, and like a group of villagers, the sheep manage to bring justice to all (or, at least in so far as it concerns them).This book also works on a philosophical level. Because the protagonists are sheep, a good deal of their "investigating" involves understanding the human world. Do humans have souls? What happens when people die? What are the responsibilities of an individual member of society? Fortunately, the author dials down the seriousness with the occasional joke. As the sheep gather for their first round of questions, "Who would want to kill the shepherd" is listed right next to "Why did it rain last night?" The humor really plays into the Miss Marple parody, leaving readers free to address the philosophical questions or simply leave them be.Oh, and there's a little drawing of sheep in the bottom right corner of the pages, which creates a flip book of a sheep jumping. How can you say no to that?
—Marya
Me he carcajeado a cascoporro, me daba tanta pena terminarlo que aplacé el momento todo lo que mi curiosidad por conocer el desenlace me permitió; desenlace afortunadamente imprevisible. Este rebaño de ovejas ávidas por que les lean, si son novelas rosas, de Pamela, como las llaman ellas (aunque no hacen ascos a las novelas policiacas), mejor que mejor, me ha conquistado. Mi querencia por lo negro me lleva a encariñarme con el carnero Othello (una de tantas referencias literarias que abundan en esta novela), pero la verdad es que todas son lanudas entrañables. La estructura es folletinesca, de forma que el final de cada capítulo te deja con las ganas de saber qué pasará a continuación. Me ha recordado bastante a dos novelas con animales pensantes: Memorias de una vaca, de Bernardo Atxaga, y Firmin, de Sam Savage. Me quedo con una imagen, la de Cloud (no podía llamarse de otra forma), que sueña con ser una oveja nube. Le seguiré la pista a Leonie Swann, una escritora joven con un talento innegable. Está muy bien traducido y editado, aunque me chirría ese «whisky», cuando los irlandeses lo llaman «whiskey».
—Bastet
I was not expecting to enjoy this book. I am not normally someone who likes the cute-animals-solve-a-murder subgenre of the mystery genre, and I really tend to despise the cozy end of the mystery genre in general, so I didn't go into it expecting much. I was reading it for a book club I was in, and I didn't pick it up until the day before our meeting to discuss the book. For that reason, I didn't have time to get through the entire book before the meeting, but I was surprised to find myself flying through it, and enjoying myself thoroughly the entire way. I was further surprised to find myself reading 3/4 of it in the day and a half between when I started it and my book club meeting, and finishing it as soon as I woke up the next morning. It surpassed my expectations completely.Leonie Swann's narrative of sheep who live in a meadow in Ireland who find themselves attempting to solve the murder of their beloved shepherd, who read them romances and detective stories in the evening, is really a story of the sheep themselves. Surprisingly, there is much attention paid to fleshing out the characters and personalities of the sheep in the flock, all 16 or so of them. I found myself particularly liking Othello, the taciturn black sheep with much mysterious experience of the outside world, and Mopple, the happy-go-lucky ram who loves to eat and remembers everything. Other fleshed-out characters include Zora, a philosophical sheep who likes to stand on the edge of the cliff that borders their pasture and stare down at the sea below; Miss Maple, the smartest of the sheep, who does most of the ratocinating where the mystery of George the shepherd's death is concerned; Sir Ritchfield, the flock's aging lead ram, who is starting to forget things; and Cloud, a sweet and tender ewe who isn't the smartest sheep in the flock by any stretch, but makes up for it with her friendly and charming personality.The sheep need to engage in some rather non-sheeplike behaviors at several points in the story in order to determine the identity of George's killer, and these elements of the story might have grated in the hands of a lesser writer. However, Leonie Swann's sure-handed narrative and character construction keeps the reader from ever losing confidence in the tale they are reading, and makes the entire adventure quite believable, as well as a lot of fun. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect results from the flock's limited understanding of human phrases and terminology. They spend the entire tale believing the town priest's name to be God, and at one point, when Satan is mentioned as a possible metaphorical culprit for the murder, the sheep dismiss this idea out of hand, as they know Satan, a goat who lives near their pasture, and they know he wouldn't do anything like that.The humans in the story are judged rather differently than they might be in a story that was written from the point of view of humans. Ham, the town butcher, is seen as a black-hearted villain, despite the fact that most of the townspeople seem to like him, and Beth, a lady who used to bring George Biblical tracts, is seen as disturbing because the sheep find her smell unappetizing. But in the end, it seems like maybe the sheep know more about people than we do, and their strange, removed perspective on all the events of the story bring insights to light that might not occur at all if we read the story from the point of view of other humans involved in the tale.There is apparently a sequel planned, and I'm not sure how much I will like that one, as the idea of a murder being solved by a flock of sheep starts to lose a lot of credibility in my mind once it happens more than once. However, considering how much better this book was than I expected it to be, I would certainly be willing to at least take a look at a sequel.
—Andrew
