The Good Good Pig.

The Good Good Pig

Sy Montgomery

Ballantine Books

1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10017

www.randomhouse.com 1-800-733-3000

ISBN: 0345481372, $21.95, 240 pp.

A Good Good Read

Like E.B. White before her, Sy Montgomery takes us out to study the barnyard in order to learn about the human heart. The tale is a simple one, told beautifully simply: a couple adopts a tiny runt piglet who grows up (and in every other direction) to be a local attraction and a good, good, friend. And while I'll admit that Montgomery's porcine pet Christopher Hogwood is a prince among pigs, her story really warms up (in both senses of the word) as we begin to know the whole family, animal and human.

The sweet Border collie is so typical of the breed--driven, loyal, and somewhat possessed. The image of her chasing Frisbees in the dark of night is one that will stay with me, though neither I not the author actually saw it. The chickens who rule their little roost, but not much else, are a welcome bit of gently comic relief, like some sort of feathered Greek chorus. The human chorus is also colorful, whimsical and much more weird than the occupants of the barn; neighbors and townspeople, and a motley crew of roommates, mostly female, mostly eccentric, all add spice to this home brew of more-urban-than-country rural life.

Last, but far from least, is Montgomery's husband Howard Mansfield, also an author, who seems to meet each minor emergency and major crisis with the same calm demeanor, without seeming any less kind and caring for his competence. Shunned and maligned by the author's mother (in spite of her ignorant prejudice we grow to care about this strong-willed Southern lady, and mourn her inevitable passing) he refuses to get miffed at his mother-in-law or at the seemingly endless parade of animals, large and small, adopted, injured, and recuperating, that fill his home--or if he does, we never hear about it.

When the author takes off on various work-related writing jaunts to places like Brazil, she gives us a tiny taste of those exotic locales, but the story is mostly, at home in her home. She gives us dawns and dusks, falls and springs, frosts and thaws. Against this backdrop are not just domesticated animals, but wild birds and hunting weasels--all roaming the same turf, all oddly, somehow, basically getting along.

And of course, there's Chris himself--larger than life, and great of heart, with an appetite for hedonism unmatched in modern literature. How grand to hear of someone who manages to get rubbed the right way almost as much as he gets to fill his belly with the "leftovers" (from gourmet to godawful) of a whole town. Animal tales can never end completely happily, but this one deposits us gently, like Hogwood himself, rolling in good clean mud, at the end of a good run. The book, like this special pig's life, is destined to be remembered as both well-loved and loving.