Giraffes

by Steven Gillis

In his debut collection of short stories, Gillis brings to life a world of lost souls and beautiful losers searching for grace in the cosmic joke that is suburban life. All of these stories have previously appeared in leading literary journals.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just finished reading this story for my creative writing class, & I personally found it too confusing and difficult to understand. While I could tell that all of the scientific comparisons the author made related to M.E.'s relationship with Mimi, but I could hardly understand any of them and felt as if they were just added in for no reason. I also couldn't tell what exactly was wrong with M.E. & Mimi's relationship: Were they having an affair? Was he too afraid to have sex? Was he coming on too strong? There was hardly anything to specifically clarify this. On top of that, the scene where M.E. was dancing around and singing the elements felt random and bizarre, though it did relate to the crazy, unsure & psychopathic feeling I was getting from M.E. as I was reading it, & I think it may have to do with giraffe mating ritual. I think the only thing I could understand from the story was the pendulum & perpetual motion scenario because M.E. was trying to figure out what he wanted to tell M.E.


However, while I felt that M.E. was partially portrayed as a psychopath, I could relate to him a little bit because of his difficulty of trying to say or express his feelings to Mimi. Personally, I think this book would've been easier to understand & more enjoyable if I knew more about science & chemistry.