The Blockbuster New Novel, Green Pig, Reviewed

But what if we have misjudged these emerald antagonists?

That’s the question answered in Green Pig, the astonishing novel by pseudonymous author Roxio Tappett. The tale unfolds in much the same same way as modern classics such as John Gardner’s Grendel, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and those episodes of Lost that proved Ben wasn’t all bad when you got right down to it.

The protagonist of this epic is Hamilton P. Pig, one of a group of descendants of the original three little pigs, turned green by radiation poisoning after some industrious birds offered their home-destroying knowledge to a certain large, malevolent wolf many generations ago, leaving the pigs exposed to runoff from a local nuclear power plant. Life has been downward spiral for the pigs ever since. Shunned by their pink peers, the green pigs, known in porcine circles as the “pukes,” have been unable to provide for themselves for decades. With virtually no resources available to them, the green pigs must live in virtual houses of cards, structures made of raw materials held together with nothing but gravity and faith, with walls on only two sides.

The community nearing starvation and reaching the breaking point, Hamilton reluctantly participates in a plan to obtain a few eggs from the great grandchildren of the birds who ruined their ancestors’ lives. Little did he or any of the others know the consequences that would befall them, the anger that would destroy their already tattered lives. This is the story of desperation turning into war, and one pig’s mortal fear as he sits, powerless, in the bottom right corner of the structure in level 2-3, as birds split into threes all around him. He watches his family and his friends’ lives snuffed out in a poof of smoke, that terrible number, “5000,” burned into his mind’s eye forever.

As the carnage erupts around him, Hamilton pines for his true love, Melinda, a yellow bird he has been meeting in secret for a few months, away from the prying eyes of their families, who would certainly disapprove. Hamilton meant to propose to Melinda, but near the end of the last meeting, she sped things ahead to a quicker close than he expected. Now, she has been called away to the slingshot at level 3-1. Hamilton is aware of what happens to the birds who go to battle. If he could only move in more than a slow roll propelled by some nearby momentum without exploding, he would go to her.

Melinda’s father, Gen. Phineas, serves as the villain. You can tell he’s the villain because he shoots the birds at the pigs.

A combination of Gone With the Wind, Romeo and Juliet, and that iPhone game people play while they sit on the toilet, Green Pig is a novel for our times. “Get me three stars!” Gen. Phineas exclaims to kick off the sprawling story in medias res.

I give this wonderful book four.