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An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it all. Outside of a childhood nickname she can't shake, Piglet's rather pleased with how her life's turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she's got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she's always cooking. But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they're set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly… hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears, and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can't explain. Torn between a life she's always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what you know you deserve, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, undone, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by. A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women's sometimes complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.
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4 stars
So... I didn't expect to enjoy this so much. At face value, it may seem like just another "sad girl literature" novel (and many of those, unpopular opinion, all blend together). This one hit differently though. The parallel of Piglet's loss of control over her relationship with her ED was difficult to read about, because it was so viscerally painful, but in a good way.
Honestly, a big part of the reason why I was so impressed with this book was the outstandingly descriptive writing (particularly the descriptions of food). I could taste, feel, smell, see the exact dishes Hazell describes, and this helped make the food (which has so much power over Piglet) feel more powerful over the reader.
Definitely recommend this one! Check tw
Favorite moments:
* She was proud, in a way, that she could still smile as the delicious life she had been savouring turned maggoty in her mouth.
* Piglet felt the apples of her cheeks lift and knew, in a way, that Margot had started to put her back together: the cracks of herself papered over, her heart, newly knotted with scar tissue, closed to confession.
* Piglet had rules, although she had never made them official by allowing them to be fully formed into thought. To have rules was to have awareness, and she didn’t have any desire to inspect what she was doing.
* Her issues with Kit felt unresolved, their fights unfinished, the ends of their conversations still unspooled across their kitchen floor… they chewed on the information, pasting the gristle of it back and forward, unable to swallow.
* She had felt detached from her parents for a long time, although now, when she let herself think about it, she felt adrift, unable to inspect the details of her mooring to Kit for fear she was no longer attached, and instead, at sea, alone.
* As they ate, Piglet felt the conversation move around her. It was as if she were in water, her body swaying in the tide.
* It was happening, she realized, as if in slow motion: their decision to preserve the veneer of their public selves, their immaculate lives, was being confirmed, becoming their union.
And Piglet was running, speeding, from one life to another. She was in the margins of her decisions, inhabiting the space in between. It felt oddly lonely, she noticed—or spacious, maybe—when there was enough room to spread out.
* …she had found herself, despite her gorging, hollow.
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