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Giraffe People
Praise for Jill Malone's fiction: "A wonderfully impressive writing debut."—Sarah Waters "An absolutely gripping and beautifully written story." —AfterEllen.com "Beautiful, essential reading." —OutinPrint.net
Cole Peter thought life couldn't get any worse. Trapped between God and the Army, the teenage daughter of the chaplain school dean at Fort Monmouth discovers a whole new peril opening up before her when she falls in love with her best friend. Her best girlfriend. Jill Malone delivers a fresh and subtle take on the coming-out story.
Jill Malone's previous novel, A Field Guide to Deception, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.
Cole Peter thought life couldn't get any worse. Trapped between God and the Army, the teenage daughter of the chaplain school dean at Fort Monmouth discovers a whole new peril opening up before her when she falls in love with her best friend. Her best girlfriend. Jill Malone delivers a fresh and subtle take on the coming-out story.
Jill Malone's previous novel, A Field Guide to Deception, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 2012
3 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Jill Malone
5 books19 followersJill Malone grew up in a military family, went to German kindergarten, and lived across from a bakery where they put small toys, like train engines, into chocolate, and the gummi bears were the size of mice. In the South, she caught tree frogs, and played kickball. She has lived on the East Coast, and in Hawaii, and for the last fifteen years in Spokane with her son, two old dogs, and a lot of outdoor gear. She looks for any excuse to play guitar. Jill is recently married to a former radical-cheerleading, performance artist, addiction counselor who makes the best risotto on the planet. It was a Day-of-the-Dead affair.
She took Latin from a hot professor at the University of Hawaii, and had this idea for a novel. Like most writers, she has a sketchy career path.
Red Audrey and the Roping, her first novel, was a Lambda finalist, and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction.
Her second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, was a finalist for the 2010 Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary award. Also, the Great Northwest Book Festival grand prize.
Giraffe People, Jill's third novel, will be released in May, 2013. If you’re curious, read Jill’s blog.
She took Latin from a hot professor at the University of Hawaii, and had this idea for a novel. Like most writers, she has a sketchy career path.
Red Audrey and the Roping, her first novel, was a Lambda finalist, and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction.
Her second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, was a finalist for the 2010 Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary award. Also, the Great Northwest Book Festival grand prize.
Giraffe People, Jill's third novel, will be released in May, 2013. If you’re curious, read Jill’s blog.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 16, 2017
Giraffe People by Jill Malone is a young adult book that is so beautiful, I often found myself putting it down to savour the writing style. It so perfectly captures the experience of growing up as a teenaged girl in the 90s that I sometimes felt like I was pulled back into my adolescence.
Full review: http://www.thelesbianreview.com/giraf...
Full review: http://www.thelesbianreview.com/giraf...
August 14, 2018
There are some books that you read on a crawl because you immediately fall in love with the characters and don’t want to lose them. Giraffe People is one of those books for me.
Cole is a regular high school girl with nothing dramatic or tragic happening, popular and busy with sports and a band but also clumsy enough in personality that she’s endearing to everyone. She and most of her schoolmates live on a military base and are specifically the children of chaplains which adds a depth to their good and bad decisions. But they’re still young people with their heartaches and drunken parties, striving to get into the best colleges. There’s also a clock ticking to their world because sooner rather than later, every family moves on to the next assigned base. Flawed and bratty at times, generous and loving at others, they’re all giddy teenagers trying to find their way and it seems genuine and every day real.
Cole falls in love with two of her best friends, one is male and one is female, and she’s at peace with it so we follow right along, hoping she’ll be happy. I rooted for her all the way and in the end, she does seem happy and she hints that this story is her looking back and reimagining one very special year in her life. That’s okay because nobody really remembers exactly how everything went but we remember how everything felt. With beautiful language and characters, the author tells it so we’re right there with the music, the late night talks with friends, and the beginnings of adulthood. Loved this book.
Cole is a regular high school girl with nothing dramatic or tragic happening, popular and busy with sports and a band but also clumsy enough in personality that she’s endearing to everyone. She and most of her schoolmates live on a military base and are specifically the children of chaplains which adds a depth to their good and bad decisions. But they’re still young people with their heartaches and drunken parties, striving to get into the best colleges. There’s also a clock ticking to their world because sooner rather than later, every family moves on to the next assigned base. Flawed and bratty at times, generous and loving at others, they’re all giddy teenagers trying to find their way and it seems genuine and every day real.
Cole falls in love with two of her best friends, one is male and one is female, and she’s at peace with it so we follow right along, hoping she’ll be happy. I rooted for her all the way and in the end, she does seem happy and she hints that this story is her looking back and reimagining one very special year in her life. That’s okay because nobody really remembers exactly how everything went but we remember how everything felt. With beautiful language and characters, the author tells it so we’re right there with the music, the late night talks with friends, and the beginnings of adulthood. Loved this book.
August 17, 2013
Jill Malone's "Giraffe People" paints a vivid and unique picture of the classic coming of age story. Set in the life of a military preacher's kid, Malone manages to create a soul in her character of Cole who is both so genuinely a teenager in her speech and actions, but also feels like a sage in her realizations. Readers feel a connection to Cole as she deals with relationships, the pressures of school, struggles with religion, family relations and becoming her own unique person. Malone also does an excellent job of talking about teenage relationships in a way that is realistic, instead of trite or overly dramatic. "Giraffe People" is a work that feels genuine and is a wonderful read.
May 26, 2019
Cole is the 15 year old daughter of an Army chaplain. During the course of this book, her family is stationed in New Jersey, but it is clear that they have moved around quite a bit and won't be in NJ much longer. The book zeros in on Cole's life during one year of high school when she is focused on school, friends, athletics, music and figuring out who she is and who she wants to be with.
The book is not pure lesfic. I wouldn't even call it a coming out YA novel. It has a more bisexual feel to it. Through much of the book Cole is involved with a boy named Jeremy with whom she has her first sexual experience. But there's also Meghan, the 18 year old in a military academy prep school who is hoping to get into West Point. Cole's family is sponsoring Meghan.
Like many kids her age in 1990 when the book takes place, Cole is all over the place about her sexual interests and her affections. And Meghan, who's also torn since she's focused on getting into the military before gays could serve openly, is not making things any easier.
The book ends with little resolved but also with a cute look back by the narrator (Cole) that was kind of charming.
The writing is exquisite. The blurb is misleading. Read the book for the character and the writing, not because you're expecting some big coming out story.
The book is not pure lesfic. I wouldn't even call it a coming out YA novel. It has a more bisexual feel to it. Through much of the book Cole is involved with a boy named Jeremy with whom she has her first sexual experience. But there's also Meghan, the 18 year old in a military academy prep school who is hoping to get into West Point. Cole's family is sponsoring Meghan.
Like many kids her age in 1990 when the book takes place, Cole is all over the place about her sexual interests and her affections. And Meghan, who's also torn since she's focused on getting into the military before gays could serve openly, is not making things any easier.
The book ends with little resolved but also with a cute look back by the narrator (Cole) that was kind of charming.
The writing is exquisite. The blurb is misleading. Read the book for the character and the writing, not because you're expecting some big coming out story.
July 26, 2025
This book had so much potential and all of the makings to be a great book. For me, it was a little choppy. Sentences were short, it jumped between scenes, I got confused about what exactly was happening when time passed, and it felt jolted. I really liked the writing style, but I wish it was a bit more fluid. And the story overall was good, I just wanted a bit more. The author used a lot of show don’t tell, so much so that it left out some details when an explanation would’ve been better. Overall, still worth a read and a solid book. 3/5
September 4, 2017
How did I find this jewel of a book? This was wonderful. I'm amazed at how she captured the 7000 things every high achieving kid is weighing at any given time. This book is reverent of its subject matter, which is a young woman becoming aware and becoming human. This book does not make fun, and doesn't shy from a very rarely well-told truth. Astoundingly high quality.
July 24, 2017
Lesbian teen growing up on an army base during the 1st Gulf War. Well done but predictable coming out story.
July 17, 2023
Weirdly straight for a book published by a lesbian publishing house. Even so, it was great.
May 8, 2013
"Luminescent" writing. Nicole Peters would like that word. Booklist also called this novel "finely tuned, daring, and perceptive."
Cole Peters defines words using gut feelings instead of a dictionary. Fifteen, trapped in a family whose life is punctuated by dashes from one military base to another, further enclosed by being a chaplain's kid, a subset within a subset, she calls it, making her feel doubly weird. No just a military brat, but a preacher's kid, those two facts encircle her life like a Venn diagram.
Set on base housing in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in the years 1990 and 1991, Cole is bound to excel in everything she does, school, sports, music. Bound to excellence, not ordained to excel, instead, she is tied to it. Hours of homework in Geometry and Spanish, history and English, hours at practice running drills, running, hours practicing in her room with a guitar.
Fifteen, not quite sixteen. And running all the time,like a sustained note pitched to a frequency no one can hear.
What is my name? she writes in the margins of her book. Nic, Nicky, Nicole, Cole? Am I a jock? She plays and letters in three varsity sports. She worries about her GPA.
This is not just a luminescent work, it is a transcendent and transformative one. Jill Malone finds and plays the desperate times of the teenaged years like an old Gibson. The reader is instantly, effortlessly, back in those halls of high school, the auditoriums and locker rooms and gyms, the whispered conversations in the library, solving math problems on the phone, sneaking out late at night, wondering, always wondering, if you have gone too far this time, or not far enough.
In sweaty, steamed up, over-heated cars, in the mud and glaring lights of a soccer field, inside a smoky, smelly bar, hanging out in a boy's room, just as friends, more than friends, Cole rises. She rises up, and up, until she is shining, glowing, luminescent, as reviewers describe too the writing in this, Jill Malone's third novel. A past winner of the 2010 Lambda award for A Field Guide to Deception, Malone continues to delight with each new book. Her writing reveals a sure, deft skill at the subtleties and ever-changing emotions of characters as they grow and progress.
Malone is the real thing, a novelist of great touch and tone, like a fine musician, the kind who play because they love the music and look up at the end of a song, surprised to find an audience.
I hope Malone's work continues to find the audience it certainly deserves. I invite you to begin to enjoy her work with Giraffe People, which I believe is her best yet.
Cole Peters defines words using gut feelings instead of a dictionary. Fifteen, trapped in a family whose life is punctuated by dashes from one military base to another, further enclosed by being a chaplain's kid, a subset within a subset, she calls it, making her feel doubly weird. No just a military brat, but a preacher's kid, those two facts encircle her life like a Venn diagram.
Set on base housing in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in the years 1990 and 1991, Cole is bound to excel in everything she does, school, sports, music. Bound to excellence, not ordained to excel, instead, she is tied to it. Hours of homework in Geometry and Spanish, history and English, hours at practice running drills, running, hours practicing in her room with a guitar.
Fifteen, not quite sixteen. And running all the time,like a sustained note pitched to a frequency no one can hear.
What is my name? she writes in the margins of her book. Nic, Nicky, Nicole, Cole? Am I a jock? She plays and letters in three varsity sports. She worries about her GPA.
This is not just a luminescent work, it is a transcendent and transformative one. Jill Malone finds and plays the desperate times of the teenaged years like an old Gibson. The reader is instantly, effortlessly, back in those halls of high school, the auditoriums and locker rooms and gyms, the whispered conversations in the library, solving math problems on the phone, sneaking out late at night, wondering, always wondering, if you have gone too far this time, or not far enough.
In sweaty, steamed up, over-heated cars, in the mud and glaring lights of a soccer field, inside a smoky, smelly bar, hanging out in a boy's room, just as friends, more than friends, Cole rises. She rises up, and up, until she is shining, glowing, luminescent, as reviewers describe too the writing in this, Jill Malone's third novel. A past winner of the 2010 Lambda award for A Field Guide to Deception, Malone continues to delight with each new book. Her writing reveals a sure, deft skill at the subtleties and ever-changing emotions of characters as they grow and progress.
Malone is the real thing, a novelist of great touch and tone, like a fine musician, the kind who play because they love the music and look up at the end of a song, surprised to find an audience.
I hope Malone's work continues to find the audience it certainly deserves. I invite you to begin to enjoy her work with Giraffe People, which I believe is her best yet.
April 17, 2014
Don’t expect a plot summary of Giraffe People because the novel is more of a character study of a 15-year-old girl the year before she starts high school.
Cole (Nicole) is a military brat on the verge of becoming a young woman. She lives on the Fort Monmouth (New Jersey) army base with her military chaplain dad, her mother, and two brothers. She calls her family “giraffe people” because dad and the kids are long-legged with narrow chests and flat feet.
Cole is about as normal as she can possibly be under the circumstances of her family moving to a different base every two years. Still, she excels at field hockey, works hard to keep up with her eight classes, plays guitar, writes songs, has a steady boyfriend named Jeremy—and of course attends church regularly. Recently her father decreed that Cole’s best friend Kelly should no longer be allowed to stay for sleepovers. The savvy LBGT reader suspects that the parents are worried about Cole and Kelly becoming too close, but Cole is clueless about the reason. In fact, she’s perfectly happy that she is able to negotiate regular dates with Jeremy by agreeing to study vocabulary with Meghan, an 18-year-old cadet sponsored by Cole’s family. Meghan is enrolled in U.S. Military Preparatory School so she can quality for West Point in the fall.
The reader gets to study vocabulary with Cole and Meghan because Malone uses a different word—defined by Cole, used in a sentence, editorialized, and often tied in to the following scene—at the start of each new section. It’s an effective technique for setting the tone from Cole’s point of view, and Malone beautifully expresses the voice of this active, curious, and talented teenager.
Cole (Nicole) is a military brat on the verge of becoming a young woman. She lives on the Fort Monmouth (New Jersey) army base with her military chaplain dad, her mother, and two brothers. She calls her family “giraffe people” because dad and the kids are long-legged with narrow chests and flat feet.
Cole is about as normal as she can possibly be under the circumstances of her family moving to a different base every two years. Still, she excels at field hockey, works hard to keep up with her eight classes, plays guitar, writes songs, has a steady boyfriend named Jeremy—and of course attends church regularly. Recently her father decreed that Cole’s best friend Kelly should no longer be allowed to stay for sleepovers. The savvy LBGT reader suspects that the parents are worried about Cole and Kelly becoming too close, but Cole is clueless about the reason. In fact, she’s perfectly happy that she is able to negotiate regular dates with Jeremy by agreeing to study vocabulary with Meghan, an 18-year-old cadet sponsored by Cole’s family. Meghan is enrolled in U.S. Military Preparatory School so she can quality for West Point in the fall.
The reader gets to study vocabulary with Cole and Meghan because Malone uses a different word—defined by Cole, used in a sentence, editorialized, and often tied in to the following scene—at the start of each new section. It’s an effective technique for setting the tone from Cole’s point of view, and Malone beautifully expresses the voice of this active, curious, and talented teenager.
August 20, 2013
I found out about Jill Malone's Giraffe People from Gay City Health in Seattle, which has a Meet the Author series. Malone lives in Spokane and drove out to the city to regale an intimate audience with stories of her youth and her family's sometime plight as relations of an Army chaplain.
In Cole Peters, Malone's protagonist, we find a piece of ourselves or our former selves: confused, searching, clutching to the familiar, losing ourselves to music and fleeting romances. Cole is a high school jock torn between the right choices and the fun choices. There are no bad choices in her religious family: badness isn't an option. Often Cole chooses nothing, just coasts. But that in itself is a choice. She plays guitar and sings lead for Doggie Life; she dutifully attends church with her family; she blocks out the real world by holing up with vocabulary lists that the cool and trustworthy Meghan constructs. In defining these words, Cole owns them and defines, too, some small portion of her at times meaningless existence. But the family around her also gives her existence meaning, if Cole will simply let them.
Giraffe People is an entertaining foray into the teenage mind and heart. And, really, they aren't so terribly scary, as places go...
In Cole Peters, Malone's protagonist, we find a piece of ourselves or our former selves: confused, searching, clutching to the familiar, losing ourselves to music and fleeting romances. Cole is a high school jock torn between the right choices and the fun choices. There are no bad choices in her religious family: badness isn't an option. Often Cole chooses nothing, just coasts. But that in itself is a choice. She plays guitar and sings lead for Doggie Life; she dutifully attends church with her family; she blocks out the real world by holing up with vocabulary lists that the cool and trustworthy Meghan constructs. In defining these words, Cole owns them and defines, too, some small portion of her at times meaningless existence. But the family around her also gives her existence meaning, if Cole will simply let them.
Giraffe People is an entertaining foray into the teenage mind and heart. And, really, they aren't so terribly scary, as places go...
November 21, 2015
15 year-old Cole is the daughter of an army chaplain coming of age during the first gulf war. She is an athlete, a musician, and a young woman exploring what life has to offer. The book is organized around the vocabulary words Cole's tutor has given her, and the device works beautifully. Malone never attempts to define Cole's sexuality or simplify her journey, and that is what makes this book so powerful. This book is about that, but also about so much more, just as human beings are sexual beings but also much more. This book was not marketed as a YA book, but I think it would stand out for teen readers and adults alike.
http://scribbleandhum.blogspot.com/20...
http://scribbleandhum.blogspot.com/20...
February 25, 2014
Go Jill Malone. Why did I wait so long to read her third, and possibly, best novel. Maybe I was frightened to be plunged back into the high school world. But Malone's great language and heart take the reader and the characters into the scary world of adolescence then lift us up.
September 8, 2013
Jill Malone has done it again!! Written a wonderful novel that makes you think and feel, and though it's about a teenage girl, it still feels very real to me, who's got teenage years far, far behind me.
Waiting for the next one!!!
Waiting for the next one!!!
July 31, 2013
Another beautifully written book from Jill Malone. I love her characters.
Read
February 5, 2016Sixteen year old Cole is an army brat traveling every few years and finds love of self in Jersey. Didn't enjoy narrative. Thought characters were not developed enough.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews