Reviews - Das herzensgute Schwein

Das herzensgute Schwein by Sy Montgomery

196 reviews for:

A good friend read this book, fell deeply in love with Christopher Hogwood (the animal, not the person), and loaned me the book. Then every day, she would ask, "Did you start the book yet?" Well, I did and I really liked it. Sy Montgomery has always felt more comfortable with animals than with humans and readers can understand why. As an only child of an Army general, she was sent to a private school a distance from their quarters and she didn't have the company of children her own age growing up. Everyone on the base is hesitant to let their children play with the general's daughter. Also, her parents never considered Sy to be their idea of a daughter, were uncomfortable with some of her life choices, and they disowned her when she married Howard, who is Jewish. Nice parenting skills there. Anyway, Sy and Howard live in an old farm house in rural New Hampshire and friends who raise pigs told them that they had an unusually large number of runts one spring. Runts who had to be taken out of their litters and hand raised. One particular runt was in particularly bad shape and Sy and Howard were urged to take him home to try to nurse him back to health. When they brought the piglet home, he rode in a shoe box and the expectation was that if he survived, he would always be small. Christopher Hogwood, as he was named, not only survived, but grew to 750 pounds and lived for 14 years. Christopher Hogwood impacted lives in his little corner of New Hampshire and became famous as he was featured in numerous articles both in print and on television. He also changed Sy's life forever as he helped to teach her some life lessons and helped her to connect with people around her and form her own version of an extended family. A very uplifting book about a wonderful pig who was as charming as Fern's Charlotte.

kindergartenkat's review against another edition

3.5

lighthearted slow-paced

fauxpunk's review against another edition

3.0

sweet, but the author is so self-aggrandizing that it becomes irritating. I really want a pet pig now though. even more than I already did, which was quite a lot.

anitaofplaybooktag's review against another edition

3.0

A sweet, nicely written book about a pet pig who managed to endear itself to everyone it met.

Sy adopted her pig, Christopher Hogsworth, as a piglet and basically details its exploits along with those of her border collie, Tess, and flock of chickens, "The Ladies". Sy is a real animal lover, to the extent that people are quite secondary, and to some degree this is a tale of how a beloved animal actually opens her up more to people.

So why only three stars?

Well, the writing itself merits more. Sy does a nice job of writing a story that holds your attention and getting you actually invested in the fate of her pets. I really like animals, so I did enjoy hearing about their specific exploits and how they lived.

I was interested. I'm just not sure I was interested for a whooolllle book. If this was a lengthy article somewhere, I'd have finished and said "brilliant"! But it wasn't, and so over and over the book kind of repeats itself.

Pig escapes, pig escapes, pig eats, pig gets fat, pig eats, pig escapes, pig eats, pig eats, pig tries to escape, pig gets fat.

Don't get me wrong. Each escape and each eating episode is told entertainingly and with a very loving eye. I just got a little bored by the end.

In addition, the pig stories are punctuated by stories of Sy's life and extensive travels. It's at least as much as a memoir as it is a story of a pig. And while I cared a lot about the pig, I didn't really care so much for or about her. Not sure I exactly liked her to be honest. She irritated me in some ways that I can't really elucidate without spoiling parts of the book.

In the end, I just wasn't that moved - - by the pig or by the author.