Pigs
In the tradition of Lord of the Flies, Pigs is an exquisitely wrought fable about the excesses of the contemporary world.
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Johanna Stoberock is the author of the novel City of Ghosts. Her honors include the James W. Hall Prize for Fiction, an Artist Trust GAP award, and a Jack Straw Fellowship. In 2016 she was named Runner Up for the Italo Calvino Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Best of the Net Anthology, and Catamaran, among others. She lives in Walla Walla, Washington, where she teaches at Whitman College.
www.johannastoberock.com
Stoberock discusses the writing process of Pigs in a guest article for Grammar Girl
In the popular imagination, pigs simply exist to consume and to be consumed. We revile them because they are seen as gluttonous animals, indiscriminate in their pursuit for satiation, and because they are dirty, wallowing happily in their own filth. Johanna Stoberock's novel Pigs uses these stereotypes--the rapacious, prosaic nature of these beasts--to amplify the grotesque impulse of want and greed inherent in both animal and man.
--The Rumpus
A superbly crafted and thoroughly reader absorbing novel by an author with a genuine flair for originality...
--Midwest Book Review
Pigs reads like a parable or a Greek tragedy... Pithy, earthy language conveys complex truths... Devastating and hopeful, the book champions reform from the inside out.
--Mari Carlson, Foreword Reviews
Johanna Stoberock's second novel is a grotesque and luminous thriller with a big, swashbuckling allegory at its core, and Stoberock's own magic trick is to populate the island with characters sufficiently rich to elevate the novel far beyond parable or admonition. It's a beautiful book that I can't wait to reread.
--Ted Scheinman, Pacific Standard
A lyrical, enthralling, and dark-inflected allegory, equal parts Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, and Lord of the Flies.
--Jonathan Lethem, author of A Gambler's Anatomy and The Feral Detective
Powerful, metaphorical, as fantastical as it is true, Johanna Stoberock's Pigs is 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 and The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac
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 and Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
-- Augusta Sparks Farnum
