Piglet
The must-read literary debut for 2024 that readers can’t stop talking about
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Discover a deliciously dark and piercing story of food and secrets, a Stylist Best Debut Novel of 2024.
‘A sharp, dark, must-read story about appetite, ambition, secrecy and shame’ Daily Mail
‘If I owned a bookstore, I’d hand-sell Piglet to everyone’ New York Times Book Review
‘A dark, weird, satisfying tale about greed and desire’ i News
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Her life is so full, so why is she hungry?
For Piglet – an unshakable childhood nickname – getting married is her opportunity to reinvent. Together, Kit and Piglet are the picture of domestic bliss – effortless hosts, planning a covetable wedding...
But if a life looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Thirteen days before they are due to be married, Kit reveals an awful truth, cracking the façade Piglet has created. It has the power to strip her of the life she has so carefully built, so smugly shared.
To do something about it would be to self-destruct.
But what will it cost her to do nothing?
As the hours count down to their wedding, Piglet is torn between a growing appetite and the desire to follow the recipe, follow the rules. Surely, with her husband, she could be herself again. Wouldn’t it be a waste for everything to curdle now?
Piglet is a searing, unforgettable and original debut which is taking readers by storm in 2024.
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‘Compulsively readable... Delicious, in every sense of the word.’ Elle US
‘An insightful, stomach-churning debut novel about the corrosive power of secrets’ Mail on Sunday
‘A cunning critique of the expectations that society continues to heap on young women.’ Financial Times
‘A debut that needs to be on your radar… A rich, vibrant, visceral book, that is brimming with acerbic wit and mouth-watering food, this is dark, witty and explores societal pressure and body image in an unforgettable way’ - Glamour
‘Delicious, dark and thought-provoking’ Hello!
‘Satirical and funny… Hazell has much to say about our food-obsessed snobbery and she plates up a deliciously-written narrative, generously peppered with lethal ground glass’ Irish Independent
‘A food-filled debut of class and ambition’ Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hazell debuts with the delicious narrative of a disastrous wedding. The bride is a London cookbook editor known by her childhood nickname, Piglet. Thirteen days before the ceremony, her fiancé, Kit, confesses that he's cheated on her, and the ensuing stress leads her to relapse into binge-eating, something she's struggled with since childhood. She's also fallen out with her pregnant best friend Margot over the decision to move ahead with the wedding despite Kit's unfaithfulness, and she becomes obsessed with making the wedding cake, an elaborate croquem bouche. Margot, before their falling out, warned Piglet that "counting down to events in days makes you sound like a serial killer," and though there's no violence, Margot's words echo unsettlingly as Piglet withdraws emotionally from Kit and begins dodging her coworkers to arrange sessions of binge-eating. Hazell occasionally slips into stereotypes, as when she describes Piglet's family members trying to stuff her into her wedding dress, but she also offers unflinching depictions of disordered eating, including a scene in which Piglet devours a pile of burgers in a chain restaurant and her fingers fuse together from the mess, causing her hand to look more like a hoof. When the big date finally arrives, Piglet finally resists the old-fashioned notions of the perfect bride. It's an appealing cautionary tale.
Customer Reviews
Sometimes ladies, it’s better not to put a ring on it
Author: British. Debut novel which grew out of (was cooked up from might be a more appropriate description) Ms H’s doctoral thesis on women and food in 21st century fiction. (Yes, really.)
Premise: Female rising star in publishing (of cookbooks) has the perfect man, a new house, and a fairytale wedding coming up. What could possibly go wrong?
Precis: The titular character is 30ish and still goes by her childhood nickname. No prizes for guessing she has an eating disorder. She also loves to cook, which dovetails nicely with her day job, and is eager to throw off her lower-medical class background in Derby and embrace hubby-to-be’s (HTB) upper middle class family in Oxford. Two weeks before the wedding, HTB confesses a dark secret, which changes everything. She decides to go through with the wedding anyway. (‘Decides’ isn’t the right word. It implies a modicum of rationality.) Suffice it to say, the big day is no fairytale. Readers who like all the loose ends tied up at the end will be spitting chips, or possibly chick peas.
Prose: Third person narrative, mostly from the POV of the protagonist, with lashings of food porn. Much of the active plot line is revealed as dialogue, with interior monologue to fill in backstory and feelings (sigh). Our gal’s bestie, a heavily pregnant lesbian, gets some good one liners, the rest of the cast not so much.