The premise of Ellyn Gaydos’s debut memoir Pig Years may seem unpromising, at least to urbanites. And yet even if you’ve never given farming a thought, Gaydos is a writer of such vigorous eloquence that you’ll find yourself riveted ... The memoir imparts an abiding sense of the gravity of these acts—of raising, tending, and killing animals; of planting, nurturing, and harvesting vegetables—that lends an almost sacred quality to Gaydos’s prose ... Unplotted, the memoir is, like life, peppered with significant, unforeseeable incidents ... Such loveliness: prose style is a kind of magic.
Memoirs about farming tend to slide in one of two directions: the farce or the ode. Neither of those genres is as satisfying as what we have in Ellyn Gaydos’s debut memoir, Pig Years, about her life as a farmhand in New York and Vermont. What this young writer has given us is more of a memento mori, rendering realistic scenes full of vivid and sometimes bizarre detail, always with an acknowledgment — on the surface or just under it — of the inescapable facts that life entails death, and growth, and arises from decay ... Her extended exploration of what it is to nurture life (wild and domesticated, plant and animal) and also end it is one of the most compelling parts of the book ... Occasionally, the writing is overripe and Gaydos’s thoughts seem undigested. We can feel, just behind these pages, the notebooks she filled on hot summer nights after pigs were fed and weeds were pulled. But the overall effect is of access and intimacy; Gaydos lets us into her world, and we follow her to the worthy and unforgiving place where nature and agriculture meet.
Stunning ... While each year follows the seasons, the book, as a whole, turns slowly from spring to winter. Both the structure and the writing are careful, controlled and exquisite ... Her tone is serious, her prose laced with gorgeous description ... Her writing is evocative but never sentimental ... The possibility of death hums through these chapters ... Pig Years is an unsparing look at a tough way of living. Gaydos is careful to bleed any romance out of the hard, hard work of farming, yet stripped to its essence, its meaning and its importance, she reveals it to be a beautiful thing.
Gaydos' close eye on the natural world allows us to vividly see the cycle of a farm's blossoming and dying seasons. She doesn't look away from any part of it, either from newborn pig life, for instance, or from the pigs' later deaths—the procedures of slaughter and the preparation of the pork that she will eat and sell ... Gaydos' cleareyed, sometimes intense perspective reminds us that farm work is not always pretty: It often involves constant near-poverty, injuries, even desperation. Still, Pig Years is a poetic meditation on fertility, loss and the farmworkers who eke out a marginal living as long as they can. It's a narrative that evokes the pleasures and perils of life and work on a small farm.
An ode to pig farming that waxes poetic in its simple majesty; readers will revel in the beautiful imagery and lyricism of this tribute to farm life ... Husbandry is portrayed with the rhythmic storytelling of Gaydos’s masterful, rapturously refreshing, and immersive writing: a delicate balance between the graceful beauty and cruel reality of farm life, loss and abundance, longing and belonging. Gaydos’s narration is so beautiful and omniscient, it feels less like a farmer’s almanac than a guided meditation through the Northeast’s harsh winters and hot summers. Her clean linen language and sophisticated writing style is sure to move readers as it turns a pigsty into an oasis and a sunburn into a warm weather kiss. Readers will fall in love with Gaydos’s humble commitment to feeding her soul through farming. More than a memoir; it’s a sensory experience of the complexities of loving and living the not-so simple simple life while hovering just above the poverty line ... This diamond in the rough is sure to be a bestseller.
In turns lyrical and brutal ... Gaydos brings a realist view to her work ... It all adds up to a powerful meditation on the cycle of life, 'the flowering of the earth, its bloom and attendant rot.' This one will stick with readers long after the last page is turned.
A complex and fraught portrait of a lifestyle that is simultaneously protective, precarious, and resistant to change ... Lyrical and cleareyed insight into farming from a writer devoted to both crafts.
