preview

Who Is Leonie Swann's Three Sheeps Full

Decent Essays

Leonie Swann is a German writer who has earned degrees in philosophy, psychology and communications. In 2005, with beautiful writing filled with similes, humor, mystery and naiveté, she published her first book, Three Bags Full. The story takes place on a grassy hillside in Glennkill, Ireland where a flock of sheep live. However, these sheep are no ordinary sheep: George Glenn’s sheep are far smarter than an average flock of sheep and they can understand humans well, possibly due to their shepherd reading literature aloud to them each day. Actuated by finding their shepherd dead on the ground with a spade through him, these clever sheep set out on a crime solving adventure to ascertain George’s killer and inflict justice upon him or her. Throughout the book one gets to know more about each sheep and of their very different character traits and skills. Although …show more content…

First of all, the book is from mainly the sheeps’ point of view. They can talk to each other and are very naïve, taking everything literally. For instance, at a point in the book the sheep were talking about fixing their lead ram’s memory, “If it’s a hole in his memory we ought to stop it up with more memories,” said Cordelia. “You stop up a hole in the earth with more earth” (Swann 159). The sheep also take God to be an ordinary person. They discuss how God moves in mysterious ways and how he could have killed George. In parts of the story, the way that the sheep incredulously talk and think about humans makes them seem unsophisticated, suggesting that the book was made for children, “Cordelia was thinking how human beings can invent words, how they can line up their invented words side by side on paper. It was magic” (Swann 29). The fact that the sheep can talk and that they take things so literally gives them a childlike presence which makes the book seem like it could be child

Get Access