The Giraffe's Neck

Download or read book The Giraffe's Neck written by Judith Schalansky and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adaptation is everything. Inge Lohmark is well aware of that; after all, she's been teaching biology for more than thirty years. But nothing will change the fact that her school is going to be closed in four years: in this dwindling town in the eastern German countryside, there are fewer and fewer children. Inge's husband, who was a cattle inseminator before the reunification, is now breeding ostriches. Their daughter, Claudia, emigrated to the U.S. years ago and has no intention of having children. Everyone is resisting the course of nature the Inge teaches every day in class. When Inge finds herself experiencing intense feelings for a 9th-grade girl, her biologically determined worldview is shaken. And in increasingly outlandish ways, she tries to save what can no longer be saved.