Piglet by Lottie Hazell
Published by Henry Holt & Company
Publication date: February 27, 2024
Genres: Debut, Fiction, Contemporary
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When a young woman’s fiancé reveals a significant betrayal two weeks before their wedding she’s left reeling. How she deals with this news and its impact on her life in this compressed timeline are the meat of Piglet, a contemporary debut novel that probes the issues around the long-term impact of childhood experiences and the outsize weight of societal expectations.
Piglet is not just the title of the novel, it’s the name by which the main character is known—a childhood nickname that has been allowed to bleed over into her adult life. I found this choice so offensive it made a connection with the main character difficult as I was unable to reconcile why any grown woman would allow herself to be called that. An adult woman without the agency to insist on using her real name?
My reaction aside, this choice on author Lottie Hazell’s part would seem to be a red flag placeholder for a woman who has never felt able to claim her own space. Piglet lives through the impressions of others with everything being about what they think, how things appear, doing the right thing. Her pending marriage falls into this category as her fiancé and his family are in a different economic and social class than her family—whom she finds embarrassing and tries to distance herself from.
Piglet knows she shouldn’t marry this man, but still moves forward with the plans because she wants the life and all it signifies. This desire channels itself into her determination to outshine every other bride and prove her worth, leading her to make several ill-conceived choices for her wedding day. The choices may be bad, but the scenes around them are some of the novel’s best writing with anxiety provoking details that will feel familiar to any woman planning a wedding.
While these scenes bring the reader closer to Piglet and shed light into her mind the novel never achieves the emotional depths it could. The narrator is undergoing a cataclysmic change within herself, but the biggest question, the only question: Why? is never answered. This circles back to my reaction to the odious nickname. It sits lumpishly on page after page, but its power to bring a bright young woman to the point of wanting to shred the entire persona she’s created is never explored. Her inner battle is intense and resonates, but there’s no explanation for its beginnings. There’s only the smallest allusion to a childhood event and even then that provides an understanding of just a sliver of her psyche. Despite its mouthwatering cover, Piglet left me unsatisfied.
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*I received a free copy of this book from Henry Holt & Company in exchange for an honest review.*
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