Christopher Hogwood was his name. No, not the British conductor. This one was a pig, the star of and raison d’être for Sy Montgomery’s oddly compelling new book, The Good Good Pig. Christopher was a runt, instantly voted least likely to survive in a world that frowns upon weakness. In the competitive economy of 11 piglets and 10 teats, if you start out small you’re likely to stay that way. But with the help of Montgomery and her husband, who adopted the pig, Christopher not only survived—he flourished. You may remember hearing about Christopher on NPR or in USA Today, two of the many places where his famed intelligence and personality were celebrated during his 14 years on Earth. In the photographs included in this book, Christopher is quite handsome, for a pig anyway—rather like a fatter Spuds MacKenzie, complete with telegenic eye patch. You may know Sy Montgomery’s name, too, from books such as Journey of the Pink Dolphins, the result of numerous trips to the Amazon, or Spell of the Tiger, which required extended adventures in India. She has traveled to and written about Zaire, Borneo and many other places far from her home in New Hampshire. Montgomery’s first book was the excellent Walking With the Great Apes, about the three matriarchs of primatology: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas. She also wrote the The Curious Naturalist, a fine book that resulted from her fine Boston Globe nature column. It may be a little surprising, given these other volumes, to find Montgomery writing about such an everyday sort of creature. For most Americans, however, the pig is not truly a familiar animal, despite its popularity in cartoons, toys and books. It is probably the latter category that supplies most contemporary mental images of pigs. There is the timid and affectionate Wilbur, of course, whose life Charlotte saves; the versatile Freddy, star of 26 literate and amusing novels by Walter S. Brooks; and of course Napoleon, the Bush administration character in Orwell’s Animal Farm. But how many real pigs do most readers know? There are more than 300 breeds of domestic pigs, from the Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa, which is usually destined for Hungarian salami, to the Poland China, developed in Ohio. (This book is rich in such tidbits.) Once you grant that pigs are no less mysterious and alien than dolphins and tigers and bats and gorillas—Montgomery’s earlier preoccupations—you have opened the way to a fascinating, insightful book about the relationship between human beings and their fellow creatures on this crowded planet. “Animals have always been my refuge, my avatars, my spirit twins,” writes Montgomery. “As soon as I learned to talk, I began to inform people I was actually a dog. Next, for an entire year, I insisted I was a horse.” Given her sympathetic approach, it’s a minor shame that Montgomery felt the need to cutesy up Christopher with trucker caps and sunglasses for the annual (prepare to wince) Chris-mas card. Even so, there’s more intellectual and historical background to The Good Good Pig than pictures of a pig in sunglasses might suggest. Montgomery really gets around, and she does so in a most reader-friendly manner. There are discussions about the historical role of pigs, but they are precisely that—discussions, between Montgomery and a friend. Consider, for example, that popular anthology of mysticism, poetry and revenge fantasies, the Bible. Alongside its talking donkeys and devil-made-me-do-it snakes, there’s an unfortunate herd of swine. One moment they’re innocently chomping weeds, and the next they’re inhabited by demons who cowboy them into the ocean. Why does Jesus perform his Gadarene exorcism only to exile the spirits into presumably sinless animals? “Jesus probably hated pigs,” says Montgomery’s friend, who goes on to analyze likely origins of Hebrew dietary restrictions. Montgomery is a fine companion. She insists on turning beautiful autumn days into holidays because of the word’s root in “holy days.” It’s easy to scoff at her casual acceptance when shamans tell her she has a very old soul, that this is her first incarnation as a human. But she really does possess the sort of intuitive connection with animals that seems less and less common in this subdivision world. “A home of our own, meaningful work, a good marriage, friends we loved, a popular pig,” she writes at one point. “What else could we want? Only one thing: a dog.” She never tires of animals. Not that she ignores her fellow human beings. Montgomery and her husband, the writer Howard Mansfield, become prominent characters, of course, as do their two children and their dog Tess. The deaths of Montgomery’s father and mother enter the story in ways that seem apt and relevant. Ultimately, however, this book is no more about a particular animal than it is about a particular woman, a human being always watching, waiting, ready to reach across the divide between us and our mute kin.
