Pigs

August 19, 2019
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.