Author: Sy Montgomery

ISBN: 0-345-48137-2

The following review was contributed by: Sue Vogan:  To read more of Sue's reviews Click Here

When I think of good publishers, one that first that comes to mind is Random House. But when I think of a good read, books about pigs never before made my list. However, Sy Montgomery's "The Good Good Pig," published by Ballantine Books (an imprint of Random House Publishing Group), made it to the top of my "must read" list.

"The Good Good Pig" mirrors what can happen with a little love and attention. And, it all starts off innocently enough, but the book grabs you so that putting it down is next to impossible.

At the time poor, sickly Christopher Hogwood comes into Sy Montgomery's life, she confesses it was not "an auspicious time to make the life-changing choice of adopting a pig." Sy's bigger-than-life and much adored father was dying from lung cancer. "He had survived the Bataan Death March. He had survived three years of Japanese prison camps." "But he could not survive this."

There were other difficulties in Sy's life -- trying to finish her first book and the words were not forthcoming. "It was a tribute to her "heroines, primatologists Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas." "The research had been challenging." She had "been charged by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire, stood up by Jane Goodall in Tanzania, undressed by an orangutan in Borneo, and accosted for money by a gun-toting guard ten thousand feet up the side of a volcano in Rwanda." Now, she couldn't find the words to tell her tale.

And, the home that Sy and her freelance husband were renting was about to be sold right out from under them.  And it had everything that Sy had ever dreamed of having -- "a fenced pasture, a wooded brook, a three-level barn, and forty-year-old lilacs framing the front door." It looked as if Sy was about to lose everything precious to her when here comes Christopher Hogwood, through resourceful  "quintessential" hippie-farmer-friends. But, Christopher's "spring had been more terrible yet."

Sy and her husband, Howard, would greet spring with a visit to George and Mary's "shaggy, overgrown 165 acres" where they "cut their own firewood, hayed the fields, and raised not only pigs, but draft horses, rabbits, ducks, chickens, goats, sheep and children."

It was a joy to see the piglets over the "Norman Rockwell meets Edward Hopper" barn's stall walls. Once they located a family of pigs, Sy and Howard would "climb in and play with them."

"On some farms, this would be a dangerous proposition. Sows can weigh over five hundred pounds and can snap if they feel their piglets are threatened. The massive jaws can effortlessly crush a peach pit -- or a kneecap." "Although pigs are generally good- natured," pigs "have been known to eat anything that falls into the pigpen, including the occasional child whose parents are foolish enough to let their child wander into such a place unsupervised." Sy writes, "That pigs occasionally eat people has always struck me as only fair, considering the far vaster number of pigs eaten by humans."

But she found George's sows "sweethearts." The spring that Sy's life seemed as if it were falling apart, George's sows had a record number of piglets. Mary explained that a sow had ten operating teats and when more piglets are born, "somebody is going to lose out -- and that somebody is the runt."

A runt, if not pulled from the litter and nursed by humans, is "usually doomed."  It is a "threat to the entire pig family" because it makes "this awful sound" which "attract predators." The sow can't take the chance and has been known "to bite the runt in half, to stop the noise. But sometimes she can't tell who's doing it. She might bite a healthy one, or trample some of the others trying to get to the runt."

"Christopher Hogwood was a runt among runts." Mary urged George to put the piglet out of its misery. What with the worming medicine that didn't work and the fact that "he probably had a touch of every disease in the barn," Christopher "wouldn't die."

Sy was in Virginia visiting her father when the "offer to ruin your life" came in from Mary. "Normally I wouldn't even give her the message," Howard told Mary, "But her father's dying, and this might be a good idea."  Because of Sy's special relationship with animals, her friends suggest she may be "half animal." This could be due to the different way Sy thinks -- "while other people are thinking about a new kitchen or a Caribbean cruise, or whether their child will win the soccer match, or what to wear to a party, I am thinking about how a possum's tail feels as it grips a branch, or whether the snapping turtle who tried to lay eggs in our yard last year will come back this fall."

Christopher was sickly -- "his breathing was wet and noisy; his eyes were runny, and so was his other end." Sy wasn't sure what to do with a sick pet pig. She wasn't even sure how long pigs lived. Christopher survived in the same shoebox Sy had used to transport him home in. Sy was surviving in another shoebox -- the one where she was crowded with thoughts of losing her home, her book, and her father.

Sy now had a reason to face each day. Christopher's determination to live and soon, his celebrity statues, brought more and more people into Sy's life. She met her neighbors and town folks who gave her slops for Christopher, ever broadening her world. For fourteen years, Christopher was a joy, almost an inspiration, for Sy.

After dark one spring day, Sy "closed the chickens in" shut the barn door "to Chris's pen as always." She said, "Goodnight, my good good pig. I love you." "And he grunted his goodnight grunt." Chris had hammed it up for camera crews, frolicked with visitors in the Pig Spa, ate chocolate donuts, and befriended many. But, he had grunted his last goodnight to his surrogate mother, Sy. The local newspaper ran Chris's obituary while cards and flowers filled Sy and Howard's home. He was a celebrity and good friend while alive -- he became a legend through death. Chris attained what most of us only dream of -- a chance to live when almost everyone had given up on us; a happy home; good friends; plenty to eat; and a peaceful death. Hog Heaven is richer -- as we all are who have read Sy's story about “the extraordinary life of Christopher Hogwood -- her good good pig.

People ask Sy, "Will you get another pig?"  She answers that she doesn't know, but sure of one thing -- "a great soul can appear among us at any time, in the form of any creature. I'm keeping my eyes open." This reviewer is keeping her eyes open, as well.