Customer Reviews

Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation (New Press International Fiction)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The subtitle of "A Novel of Lust and Transformation" caused me to hesitate before picking up this small volume. The subtitle is both accurate and a teaser - the novel never slips into crudeness even when presenting crude behaviour.

The tale - a woman transforming into a pig and writing her story when she has accepted a pig life style - is a difficult story to successfully write. Darrieusseeq makes a few slips but clearly establishes herself as an author to be watched.

The social message of the book is a little overbearing, a little "plastic". But the book as a whole is sufficiently interesting that the reader is willing to forgive the message.

After looking at the front and back covers I feared this might be yet another overhyped little novel about sex by an overhyped writer - a book that would start with a sprint and then run out of ideas after 40 pages. Although the novel sags half way through, it recovers well and exceeded expectations. Apart from the obvious winks at Orwell and Kafka, the book also reminded me of Zahavi's Dirty Weekend and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. It's like a Will Self novel, except that it it has humour, heart, narrative skill...and truffles. Four Oinks.

The debut novel by Marie Darrieussecq, who later published another short novel UNDERCURRENTS, is a fantasy about a part-time perfume employee who finds herself transformed bit by bit into a luxurious pig the men go wild for. Her flesh grows rosy and firmly "pneumatic," and the men cannot keep their greedy hands off her. She revels in their attention. However, what makes her desirable at first eventually exacts its cost. When she meets a werewolf lover who understands the complexity of being part human, part animal - and even, at times, all animal - she finds an odd redemption.

This book is less scandalous than its subtitle suggests, with the opening quote about a pig being slaughtered the most distressing moment of this short, allegorical story. Darrieussecq's sensual language of greed and lust carries this book beyond its thin premise, but ultimately, the novel ends up being not much more than an beautifully worded exercise in imagination.

Readers of contemporary French literature in translation will be keenly interested in this fantasy that took the country by storm in 1996. It can easily be read in an afternoon, though understanding the psyche behind it is much more difficult.

This short noble almost demands an attempt to finish reading it at one stroke. Possible to do but probably a mistake. At first brush it may seem too easy. A direct plot, an unsophisticated message. Maybe so. But then again maybe not. Is it really A book about a woman who is turning into a pig? Was she really a humanbeing to begin with? Was she not a "pig" at the outset? Does she not end-up being a lot more of a humanbeing? It does not seem as if a human static society is observing her dynamic transformation into "pig-hood". Rather, it is her, static all along in her half-human half-pig identity, that is watching society's dynamic shift from better to worse.

Pig Tales tries to be a near-futuristic irony-cum-farce tale about France at the Millenium run by the ultra-right-wing, told from the perspective of a young lady who works in a "cosmetics boutique" which is in actuality a retail brothel. The various transformations within French society are mirrored in, and symbolized by, the young lady's transformation into a pig. The stream-of-consciousness writing style can be occasionally engaging, and the main character now and then exhibits a strong expository voice, but the book bogs down in an obsession with sexual expression and fetishes (the author is distinctly anally oriented)on the one hand and inept political symbolism on the other. very frustrating to the reader as there definitely is a viable story idea lurking in the background, waiting to emerge, but shut away by the authors fixation on the young lady's professional goings on. In the end, the stereotypes are so overblown that the irony is lost and the fixations on seual expression so dominating that any element of farce is buried beneath too many detailed descriptions of oversized femal buns. This book is reputed to have been a "literary sensation" in France. If so, it goes a long way towards explaining why the French invest so much time and energy in reliving their past glories. If this is literature over there, then the term French Culture has taken on the aspects of an oxymoron. A major disappointment. END

If I remember well, the book is supposed to be a fable, and the narrator speaks in a very naive (and self-centered, but that's normal I feel) way. It's not supposed to sound realistic, it just aims at making the reader smile from time to time and then realize there might be more to it than what he/she thought in the beginning.

Looks like it was not a great hit in Texas! But the author was only 21 when she wrote the book, and the mere fact that at that age she wrote interesting fiction (instead of the usual mix of personal life and feelings) is interesting.

A couple extra comments : 1) it was not short-listed for the Goncourt Prize 2) talking about Jerry Lewis and France is about as true and relevant as saying that Maurice Chevalier has been on top of the US charts for the last 70 years!

This book might seem a bit messy to understand, but it can help you understand what is happening in Latin America, a lot of changes prometed by governments and foreign investors. What is the price? Corruption everywhere, in every Latin American country, without any exceptions. Enjoy!

From Argentina to Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and so on...

Read this 4 or 5 years ago. Didn't get "it". Way beyond my capacity to interpolate from reality to suspended disbelief. The characters are not intelligent, appealing, or funny. On the other hand, I found War and Peace to be just another Harlequin Romance. Not particularly fond of unfounded theories based on authors' fantasized insight...unless they are my own. I give this book kudos for being only slightly longer than this critique.