THE PIG DID IT by Joseph Caldwell

Aaron McCloud has come to Ireland to grieve for his lost love. Well, not exactly lost. Having generously chosen to offer himself to Phila Rambeaux, a student in his writing class who came to his party “wearing a dress of black silk with orange and blue geometrics that looked like intergalactic debris left behind by a failed space probe,” Aaron has been soundly ignored, if not dismissed outright. His childhood home on the west coast of Ireland, in the company of an almost-beloved aunt, is the place, he thinks, to mourn:


“His stretch of beach would be deserted. His solitude would be inviolate, his loneliness unobserved and unremarked except by the sea itself. There would, of course, be gulls, there would be curlews. He would hear their shrieks and watch the curve of their spread wings riding a current of air so rarefied that only a feather could find it. Perhaps there would be cormorants and, if he was lucky, a lone ship set against the horizon. There would be squalls and storms, crashing water, and thundering clouds. Lightning would crack the sky. Winds would lash the cliffs and—again, if he was lucky—rocks would be riven and great stones thrown into the sea. Then he, Aaron McCloud, would walk the shore unperturbed, his solitude, his loneliness, a proud and grieving dismissal of all that might intrude on his newly won sorrows.”

Except for the pig. The one that attaches itself to Aaron before he can begin his mourning and then keeps digging up things that interrupt the process, like the skeleton in his aunt’s garden that revives a centuries-long feud among two families and a sexy swineherd. And a sea that seems determined to swallow him. And a secret passage in his aunt’s cottage on the cliff. And a couple of Keystone gardai. And some Guinness, actually a whole lot of Guinness. And Irish darts and wakes and beautiful blarney….It’s hard for Aaron to devote himself to serious grief-wallowing, “to deepen the lines on his forehead, to implant a mournfulness into his eyes that would forever silence the joyful and inspire shame in the indifferent” when there’s just so much distraction.

Part of what makes this book so hilarious is the contrast between the earnest inanity of Aaron and the pseudo-loftiness of the writing style. You can read it just as a funny story, but you can also see it as a skillful parody of the “literary” novel, as in this passage:

“It surprised Aaron that the slam of the screen door, the quick clap, the low thrum, didn’t bring on some Proustian recall of his boyhood summers there, an assault of high-clouded days, of rabbits and clams and apples with worms, of bare feet and cow pies and thistles, and of thundering storms with jagged lightning piercing again and again the tortured breast of the sea. But then he quickly remembered: In his childhood there had been no screen door.”

I’m a lover of poetic novels, the kind where long sentences full of lovely images and powerful emotions tumble over each other. I’ll probably never read such a book again without yearning for the pig to make an appearance. Whatever brand of humor you appreciate, this book will make you laugh out loud. Caldwell says he wrote the Pig trilogy because his work was getting too dark, and he wanted to find the humor in life. I’m so glad he did. And now I’m off to order Book Two, The Pig Comes to Dinner.

THE SHERLOCKIAN by Graham Moore

My husband got me this when I couldn't stop raving about the brilliant new Masterpiece Theater depiction of Sherlock Holmes in today's London, and because I love seeing new takes on old stories. Moore's absorbing story is another creative spinoff with two alternating narratives happening a century apart. Both are based on true stories. One thread, set in 1900, follows Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker as they search for both a bomber threatening Conan Doyle and a serial murderer who marries and then murders young suffragists. This takes place during "the great hiatus," when Conan Doyle had seemingly killed off Holmes and as a result found himself quite unpopular. In the second story a modern-day Sherlockian seeks the killer of a fellow Baker Street Irregular who may have found a long-sought Conan Doyle diary. Both plots rapidly thicken, and gradually each enlightens the other, leading to a wonderfully satisfying conclusion. A perfect antidote to post-Christmas blahs. (In my Kindle version, a must-read Author's Note comes before the text, but you'll want to read it afterward--and possibly continue exploring the story of Conan Doyle, as I am going to do in Julian Barnes' Arthur and George.)