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“To say something, to do something, to feel something, would be to self-destruct.”

Author: Lottie Hazell

Piglet finally has it all. She’s clawed her way to the top. She’s an up-and-coming chef on the brink of a brilliant career and engaged to a handsome society man. Her lavish wedding, where she will make her pièce de résistance, her own cake, is just around the corner. She has posh friends now, a fancy life, and despite the childhood nickname that hides a bevy of trauma, she has finally made it.

But then, two weeks before her wedding, her fiancé confesses something horrible. Something he thinks – no he knows – will end them. But can Piglet let go of the dream? Can she let go of this ticket into the perfect life? She’s painted a picture to envy, hasn’t she, so all she can do now is go through with it, have the wedding, and protect everything for which she has fought.

But her brave face is slipping off. As the weeks become days, her complicated relationship with food is dragging her down, revealing the despair she is trying to hide. Her friends sense something is wrong. Her family notices it. Even her coworkers are watching the spiral, but still, Piglet is dedicated to the pretense . . . until she isn’t.

The beauty of Piglet is the complexity of the drama, the decadent descriptions working on two levels: half poetry, half cry for help. Piglet, whose real name is Pippa, is seeking to satiate her hunger to be seen. But she doesn’t want the real version of herself seen – the version that sacrificed for her sister as a child and received a cruel nickname instead. The version where she comes from a poor, lower-class family, with a father who cares more about appearance than for her feelings. No, Piglet hungers to be seen in her perfectionism, as she wants to be. As she crafts her elegant (and hard to pronounce dishes), which her sluggardly family fails to find impressive, she builds her new persona. Even her fiancé, Kit, is a ticket into a new world. Not a love, at least not that we see, but a stairstep towards satiation.

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

But, as the old adage goes, be careful what you wish for. Piglet now has the perfect appearance, just in time to discover that the hunger is still gnawing. Like her gorgeous wedding cake, it’s all hacked together, airy and ultimately hollow. As Piglet struggles to literally keep up appearances, her sub-conscious prods her to ask for and demand better, to embrace the real woman and stop chasing an empty dream.

We never do exactly know what Kit did – both a frustrating narrative move and a fascinating one, because we each put in our personal “worse case” betrayal scenario, ensuring that we 110% hate Kit, and hate him even more for dropping the bomb two weeks before the wedding. This leaves us also wondering what lie he is living. Did he want to sabotage the wedding? What dream was he living that he finally found hollow?

But Piglet is made of stronger stuff than Kit. She continues to fight for what she thinks will fulfill her, and author Lottie Hazel uses the food motif to elegantly unspool Piglet’s self-esteem and control over her own ultimately uncontrollable destiny. The ending is a bombshell, and we’re both satisfied and shocked. Why now, Piglet, we wonder, while secretly gloating that Kit got his comeuppance. The difference between ceremony and heart is stark here, and while Kit isn’t fully destroyed (I guess you can’t have everything), we’ve been on an emotional roller coaster with this relatable, fragile, all together human woman who wakes up from her perfect dream only to discover that it was a nightmare all along and that control is an illusion. Even the most perfectly executed lies can never fulfill us, despite what everyone on the outside may think about our flawlessly curated, lucky lives.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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