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The Memoirs of Toby, the Learned Pig
by Russell Potter
Blending the sophisticated satire of Jonathan Swift with the charming exuberance of a Pixar film, Pyg tells the story of Toby, a truly exceptional pig who lived in late eighteenth-century England. After winning the blue ribbon at the Salford Livestock Fair and escaping the butcher's knife, Toby tours the country, wowing circus audiences with his abilities to count, spell, and even read the minds of ladies (but only with their permission, of course). He goes on to study at Oxford and Edinburgh - encountering such luminaries as Samuel Johnson, Robert Burns, and William Blake - before finally writing his own life story. Quirky, beguiling, and endlessly entertaining, this memoir of a "remarkable sapient pig" is a sharp and witty delight.
Paperback original
"Starred Review. The use of old-fashioned typography, capitalization, and woodcuts complement the 18th-century prose style, creating an immensely readable, clever, and fun novel." - Publishers Weekly
"This is an Oxbridge pig; you might dub him an oinktellectual, a rational, shrewd observer of flawed humanity. Toby shines light on our human qualities, lending due distance to how we might view them: our capacity for loyalty, friendship, all the deadly sins, curiosity, fear of death, vulnerability and a yearning for recognition, whatever our worth. It is the most ordinary of tales, made extraordinary not by the 'freakishness' of its 'author' but by the humanity. Which is what captivates and touches, and makes the book worth reading." - The Scotsman (UK)
"In prose that manages to be both dense and arch, Toby relates his escape from the butcher's knife with the help of his friend Sam... all good clean fun." - The Times (London)
"Written in a delightfully erudite, faux early 19th century prose... a multi-layered, rumbustious romp which the author pulls off cum laude." - The Observer (London)
"A delicious book. A reminder of the risks, the drama and the quite extraordinary comedy of being born with a snout, four hooves, and a corkscrew tail." - Marie Darrieussecq, author of Pig Tales
This information about Pyg was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Russell Potter is a professor of English at Rhode Island College. Pyg is his first novel. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
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