Pigs Can't Swim: A Memoir (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)
Escape. That’s the goal of a young Peppe’s life, recounted in her debut memoir. An animal lover on a Maine farm where the meals often come from the livestock, Peppe recounts a harrowing childhood as the youngest of nine children, by turns ignored, reprimanded, or bullied. Time has not blunted the hard edge of her anger and fear toward her family, but her brief attempts to understand their perspectives prevent this from being merely a reckoning of past wrongs. Instead her recollections make for vivid, powerful stories. They are told one by one without a larger connecting narrative, but as they are pieced together, they present a striking picture of ignorance and neglect. She declines to name nearly everyone in the book, instead relying on shorthand based on their characteristics (for example, the blustery and favored brother), to mixed effect—while distracting, it also lends an everyman quality to the story. Peppe’s past, like the book itself, is raw and brutally depicted from the perspective of a child trying to make sense of the world and her place in it. --Bridget Thoreson