Like no doubt many others, I never even heard of this novel until the film adaptation of it was heavily promoted earlier this year. This still wouldn’t be a book I’d ordinarily read but I heard good things about it on Broken Forum and I am trying to read more outside of genre fiction so here I am. One huge difference is that while the trailers for the film make it out like some sort of cute children’s movie, this book is not that at all. The sheep are intelligent but they are also often wrong because they don’t understand humans at all. It’s funny but it’s also genuinely dark and not at all a book that is suitable for children.

In the village of Glenkill in Ireland, a herd of sheep live happily, tended by their shepherd George Glenn who often reads aloud to them. But one morning the sheep find George dead in the meadow with a spade stuck through him. The police along with many other gawkers trample through their meadow but nothing comes of the investigation. The sheep therefore decide to seek justice for George themselves, led by Miss Maple who considers herself the cleverest sheep in Glenkill. She is assisted by Mopple, a meat breed sheep with a huge appetite and an excellent memory, along with Othello, a bold black ram. The sheep naturally suspect the butcher Ham whom they intensely hate but there is no shortage of other suspicious characters. The priest of the local church whom the sheep mistakenly call God seems to be afraid of something and the mere sight of Othello seems to evoke Satan for him. One of George’s most frequent visitors is Beth, a woman who regularly gives him Bible tracts in an attempt to turn him away from his godless ways. The sheep are initially heartened by the arrival of a new shepherd Gabriel but become dismayed when they learn that his own flock of sheep are stupid and are bred to be slaughtered for meat. Though the sheep don’t understand it, the reader soon realizes that criminal activity is rife in Glenkill and George himself is heavily involved in it.

Despite how adorable the sheep’s point of view is, this is not a watered-down children’s story. The sheep know what death is and are afraid of it. A couple of them once performed in a circus and looked up to by the others for their worldly experience but are badly traumatized by it. A shocking number of the villages’ human residents are involved in one criminal conspiracy or another and the police are either incompetent or uninterested in solving the crimes. The sheep are far smarter than they have any right to be, which might be attributed to how much George loved them and read to them. But they’re still sheep and so their constant misunderstanding of human concepts is a perennial source of humor. Much of it is still of the distinctly dark variety, such as when they realize that George’s body will be buried in the cemetary of the church and they are horrified that it is effectively a garden for corpses. This is both a heavier read than I’d expected but also so satisfying as author Swann takes on the challenge of portraying life from the sheep’s perspectively so seriously and completely. It’s the perfectly counterpoint to the usual animated films with animals that are so anthropomorphized that they’re just dressed-up humans. Here the sheep are allowed to be sheep so you’ll get a full account of how sheep like to spend their day and think about while they’re munching the many delightful varieties of grass.

I suspect however that diehard fans of detective stories might not be as happy. It’s true that the sheep are fantastic at surveillance. All they have to do is park themselves near groups of humans to listen in on their conversations and no one notices at all. But their leaps of logic are mostly wrong. Great for humor and for poking fun at human conventions but less satisfying as a piece of detective fiction. The sheep are in fact so wrong and their theories so misleading that it may be difficult to fully understand what really happened from the human perspective. I was disappointed for example that George’s wife and mistress both have almost no role in the story. There’s no real resolution to the larger conspiracy and as the sheep have little insight into human psychology, it is up to the reader to read between the lines to grasp what moves each character and infer details of their pasts.

Based on my impressions from the trailers of its film adaptation, I’d expected it to be a light and breezy read. While there is certainly plenty of humor, the fears of the sheep and the details of George’s death are rather dark, which is why they changed it so much for the movie. It also requires careful reading and some thought to interpret the real events as opposed to the sheep’s version of them. It makes sense why this novel is as highly regarded as it is as it’s deeper than one might expect. That said, I enjoyed my time with this book and my little digression out of genre fiction, but one of these books is more than enough for me. So I’ll have to skip the multiple other novels Swann wrote following the success of this debut.