When Piglet's fiance reveals a horrible betrayal two weeks before their wedding day, she decides to proceed with the event, but her life slowly starts unraveling in the lead-up to the big day.
If I owned a bookstore, I’d hand-sell Piglet to everyone ... Hazell’s prose is as tart and icy as lemon sorbet; her sentences are whipcord taut, drum tight ... I’ll tell you that I devoured this book, and finished it hungry.
Hunger in all its forms is central to Lottie Hazell’s debut novel, and the discomforting nature of Piglet’s name is not unearned ... The novel’s great revelations lie in uncomplicatedly virtuous scenes that disappoint the promises wrought by class standoffs and ostentatiously ripped wedding attire ... It’s difficult to feel satisfaction over the simplicity of her self-flagellation at the end ... Piglet is an easy novel to pass a Sunday afternoon with, but Hazell’s chosen points of interest are valiantly inflammatory ones, and one wishes they were interrogated less politely. Perhaps next time, they might be.
The novel hits a lot of the right notes—humor, absurdity, pathos, and ultimately, growth. Piglet the character’s stubborn focus on the exterior is also Piglet the novel’s biggest obstacle—as readers, we never really get under Piglet’s skin. For instance, the true origin of her family nickname resonates especially deeply but isn’t explored. It’s brushed under the rug the way so many past traumas are. Perhaps that’s the point Hazell is trying to make. There’s a lot to unpack in Piglet—expectations, superficiality, and women’s relationship with food and with their own bodies. As a debut novel, Piglet is ambitious, sitting somewhere in the middle of the Venn diagram where comic women’s fiction, literary fiction, and absurdism meet. Does it work? Mostly, yes.
