Pigs
A Novel
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A dark, dystopian novel from the author of City of Ghosts.
Four children live on an island that serves as the repository for all the world's garbage. Trash arrives, the children sort it, and then they feed it to a herd of insatiable pigs: a perfect system. But when a barrel washes ashore with a boy inside, the children must decide whether he is more of the world's detritus, meant to be fed to the pigs, or whether he is one of them. Written in exquisitely wrought prose, Pigs asks questions about community, environmental responsibility, and the possibility of innocence.
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"A lyrical, enthralling, and dark-inflected allegory, equal parts Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, and Lord of the Flies." —Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of The Arrest
"Powerful, metaphorical, as fantastical as it is true . . . a masterpiece. Stoberock scrutinizes mankind's failure to tend to our planet, our children, and our fellow man, and the result is a terrifying, tremendous book, its darkness lit in unpredictable ways by campfires of compassion and hope. What a wise, searing novel for the twenty-first century." —Sharma Shields, author of The Cassandra
"Pigs looks unflinchingly at some of the scariest parts of our world—a changing climate, an ocean full of garbage, and us, the fragile animals. Yet within this, there is tremendous beauty and grace—Johanna Stoberock has written a kind of love song to survival, to life itself."—Ramona Ausubel, author of Awayland
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This lackluster allegorical novel from Stoberock (City of Ghosts) is about greed, waste, and the collective choices humans make. On an unnamed island, six pigs are confined to a sty, where they must eat the garbage that washes ashore. The garbage is brought to the pigs by four children who remember nothing of their pasts and know nothing about how they came to the island: Mimi, the oldest; Luisa, whom readers follow for most of the novel; Andrew, the only boy; and Natasha, still a toddler. The island is ruled over by an amorphously defined group of grown-ups, characterized only by their gluttony and cruelty. The children's lives, otherwise stagnant and lived in fear of the adults, are changed by two people who appear on the shore among the garbage. First, there's Eddie, a child who bears a familial resemblance to Luisa and whose memory of a life before the island gets him claimed by the grown-ups as one of their own. And then there's Otis, an adult sailor stranded on the island after a shipwreck. His innate desire for goodness and ability to regret his past mistakes make him diametrically opposed to the rest of the grown-ups. Stoberock certainly has a point to make, but the flat, one-dimensional characters are unable to carry the execution through.
Customer Reviews
Pigs
Horrible. Dragged myself through it in a desperate hope that things might string together to form some semblance of an ending. Something to corral the unfinished train of thoughts into a conversation. But no. The only magic in this story is how she stole my money…