The Peculiar Boars of Malloy Book

This Sherwood Anderson-award winning farcical novel follows two teenage boys living on a farm in rural Indiana. Their father—a diminutive man and the laughingstock of their small town—purchases two boars in an attempt to impress his neighbors and demonstrate, by proxy, his masculinity. The boars, however, turn out to be resolutely gay and deeply committed to each other, setting off a ridiculous chain of events that brings the spotlight and accompanying media circus to Malloy.

In the midst of all of the madness is the boys’ ongoing, and at once heartbreaking and hilarious, quest to find their wayward mother through a series of touching and humorous flashbacks. Disappointed in their pitiful father, the boys cling to an unrealistic fantasy of their mother, who is in actuality a promiscuous drifter.

Crandell’s depiction of the gay boars provides much of the book’s humor and, unexpectedly, its moral compass as he weaves significant and subtly articulated themes of animal rights and gay rights. The Peculiar Boars of Malloy captures the best traditions of American satire, while turning the conventions of the coming-of-age novel on its head. Crandell’s heart and humor will be appreciated by lovers of satire and animals and those readers possessed of a uniquely Midwestern sense of the ridiculous.

Publishers Weekly

Crandall (Hairdos of the Mildly Depressed) goes farmyard farce in this unfortunate tale of two teenaged brothers, their stunted father (left by their wayward mother), and a pair of gay pigs. Indeed, the discovery that the two newly purchased boars prefer each other to the stable of available females is but the latest absurdity in the life of Ronald and Lance’s sad sack father, Gerald Bancroft, a “pint-sized” farmer turned hog breeder who has been the butt of the locals’ jokes since high school. Ronald, the reasonable older son and an aspiring veterinarian, arranges for the hogs’ artificial insemination and tries to keep his angry father from venting his wrath on the boars, but not before news of the “peculiar” animals sweeps the nation, arousing heated demonstrations. Narrated by Lance, the younger, sensitive son who dreams of becoming a pilot, the novel misses no opportunity to skewer Gerald, or even the boys’ mother, who makes an occasional appearance and is, like her ex-husband, a one-dimensional gag. Crandell’s latest effort forgoes empathy or even slightly refined humor in favor of barnyard grunts. (June)