Separating the pigs from the swine

“MAM says my head is bulky as a hog’s on account of Dad was pig,” says Jack Plum, the indestructible and spirited principal narrator of British novelist Kitty Fitzgerald’s amazing “Pigtopia.” “She says my brain is mush, like pigslops, on that purpose.”

Disfigured, considered an ogre by the neighbors and his own mother, Jack has found a way to wrest affection and companionship from the animals she believes him akin to. With the initial help of his father, Jack has built a secret pig haven in his cellar. “It was Dad’s daytime dream to breed his own piggies, not chop them to chumps at Blandish Butchers with his sharp, shiny tools,” Jack tells us.

But his father, who loved him dearly, disappeared mysteriously some two decades earlier, when Jack was 12, leaving Jack to finish construction of the pig palace on his own and wring whatever small comfort he might find from his callous environs.

Jack has never been to school; his mother has always treated him as an imbecile and refused to concede to the father’s wish that their son be allowed to lead a normal life. An alcoholic confined to a wheelchair, she blames Jack for all that’s wrong with her life, including her husband’s departure. Hurling constant abuse and insults at her son, she is one of the most vile characters ever created.

Yet Jack tries to understand her. “I am the blame of her wobbly legs and such constant pain what nags at her back like rats’ teeth crunching at bone,” he explains, in a distinctive narrative voice that readers will come to trust. “I do not think she has intention of hurting, she just can not stop the meanness coming into her because it is all of my fault -- the trap with the wheelchair, Dad gone, all of that.”

Jack doesn’t dwell on her cruelty or wallow in self-pity. He focuses on turning his pig palace into a magnificent home for his pigs and their piglets, taking them into the outside world for “exercise and snaffle” when everyone in town is asleep and no one will notice them as they venture into the adjacent woods. He sees pigs as smart, resourceful, clean and loving. Though he’s long been called a pig by his mother, he redeems the slur and make his pigness something to be proud of: “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.”

During daylight hours, Jack ventures from the house only sporadically, to do his mother’s errands -- buying her whiskey, filling her prescriptions, collecting money from the bank and trying to avoid the stares, jeers and stones aimed at him by the neighborhood kids. He’s been watching one kid in particular, Holly Lock, for several years. She seems kind and gentle, someone who might understand him and his pigs. “I have the longing of an other to make words with,” he tells us. “A humanpig who does not mess my mouth up with the blaming, one who listens to my insidethoughts and speaks out theirs.”

With this hunger building in his heart, he resolves to make Holly’s acquaintance on her 14th birthday and perhaps persuade her to visit the pig palace. In doing so, he opens the doors of his pig utopia to the outside world and all that that entails.

This stunningly moving novel dances from Jack’s point of view to Holly’s, from the time she is first approached by the scary, damaged man who wishes her happy birthday. (“Keep away from me or I’ll scream!” she responds.) Jack and Holly forge a deep friendship. Holly too has been abandoned by a father and in Jack’s pig palace encounters needed solace.

She helps Jack deal with his ailing mother, shares her burdens with him and brightens his life. But the town cannot understand such alliances -- can only view their friendship as dangerous and perverted. An ugly confrontation brews.

“Pigtopia” builds toward a horrific climax, leading readers to wonder how in the world the author will ever pull off an ending. And though the finale is a little too pat to fully satisfy, that scarcely matters. Fitzgerald’s novel is a tour de force, confronting us with the daily meanness of life yet celebrating the small flickers of kindness that ease the suffering of pigs and humans alike.

Bernadette Murphy is a regular contributor to the Times Book Review and the author of “Zen and the Art of Knitting.”