Swann, Leonie 1975-

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Swann, Leonie 1975-

PERSONAL:

Born 1975. Education: Earned degrees from Munich University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Berlin, Germany.

CAREER:

Writer. Has worked in journalism and public relations.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Best Adult Books for Teens selection, School Library Journal, 2007, for Three Bags Full.

WRITINGS:

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, translation by Anthea Bell, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2006.

ADAPTATIONS:

Three Bags Full has been translated into sixteen languages.

SIDELIGHTS:

Shepherd George Glenn is found dead, murdered with a shovel to the chest, in the small, yet aptly named Irish town of Glennkill. This sets the premise for German graduate student Leonie Swann's humorous debut novel Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story. The sheep of Glenn's flock are highly disturbed, as he had always been a good caretaker and they could not see a reason for his death. The flock, led by Miss Maple and populated with such unusual characters as Mopple the Whale, Othello (the black sheep of the bunch), Melmoth and a number of others, decides to investigate the murder themselves. Unfortunately sheep—even in this unusual and comedic tale—cannot talk to humans; this makes difficult such elements of criminal investigation as interviewing witnesses and tracking down suspects. The sheep, however, somehow manage to put themselves in the right place at the right time to eavesdrop on many conversations that assist in their attempts to put the puzzle together. The reader learns the flock's viewpoint on such characters as Satan, a neighboring donkey, Glenn's widow and her very religious friend Beth, a priest to whom they've assigned the name God, and two characters particularly scary to a group of livestock, the local butcher and a man who is planning to slaughter his own flock of sheep when they reach full maturity.

Through the diligence of their listening unobserved to conversations—because who would notice a grazing sheep and think anything of it at all? A factor they use to their advantage—and using clever thinking to put meanings together, the sheep ultimately solve the crime. They are then left to figure out a way to make the killer known to the human population but again use their smarts to work out a solution to the issue of communication, becoming the town's heroes in the end. An element of the novel mentioned in many reviews is the fact that Swann makes no attempt to turn her sheep into anything other than the ovine creatures that they are. They are sheep and think about things in such a manner as one would expect sheep to think. As such Emily, a critic for the Swarm of Beasts Web site, noted that the story is "necessarily a little oblique," as humans and sheep think about things in different manners; while she found that this distracted from the story's "emotional impact," she observed that in the end the story left her "utterly satisfied and content." In a Library Journal review, contributor Devon Thomas favorably noted the "literary allusions that add humor" to the "quirky" tale, the latter a description also favored by Booklist critic Emily Melton who, in addition to "quirky," described Three Bags Full as "lively, weird," and at the same time "sparklingly inventive" and "completely original." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews seemed to sum up the general opinion of Swann's debut by noting that "the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical."