Pigtopia Book

Hailed as a "tour de force" (Los Angeles Times) and a "surprisingly sweet story" (Entertainment Weekly), Kitty Fitzgerald s Pigtopia is a spellbinding debut, featuring one of the most singular characters to come along since Christopher Boone in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Society has rejected Jack Plum. Born with a disfigurement, he is labeled either a monster or an imbecile by his abusive mother and thoughtless neighbors. But Jack has created a haven, his "pigtopia," a shelter where Jack hides from the world with his beloved pet pigs. Then Jack meets Holly Lock, a sensitive young teenager who lives nearby, and offers her a piglet. Together they forge an unlikely and beautiful friendship, until society and fate intervene and Jack s secret world is threatened by forces beyond his control.

In language of stunning beauty, Kitty Fitzgerald has created a startling original world with characters that will capture your imagination and your heart.

Kitty Fitzgerald is an Irish novelist, poet, and playwright. Pigtopia was a finalist for the Discover Great New Writers Award. Her previous works include Small Acts of Treachery, Snapdragons, and Marge.

Publishers Weekly

Irish playwright Fitzgerald's prose reads like the saw-sound of a Gaelic folksong, with most of the macabre moral fable told in the particular patois of Jack Plum, a boy with a monstrous appearance but greater depths of humanity and understanding than most "normal" people. Labeled a freak or an imbecile, Jack lives alone with his abusive mother. His only refuge is the cellar shelter conceived of by his long-absent father as a hidden place to raise pigs. "Without the pigs I would be forsaken of love and perhaps I could turn into anger shapes like Mam does and want to put out blame. I know these types of stirrings-the want to make hurt." Only when he befriends the awkward, young Holly Lock does human friendship enrich his life. But the two share dark secrets, and the deeper and more genuine their friendship becomes, the greater the threat to Jack's "Palace for pigs." This beautifully crafted story retells the classic lesson of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, with much of the innocence and the horror intact. While Fitzgerald brings the book to a somewhat hurried end that plays with the conventions of classical Greek tragedy, this debut novel is still satisfying and heartbreaking. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.