Piglet

By: Lottie Hazell

Narrated by: Rebekah Hinds

Brought to you by Penguin.

Her life is so full, so why is she hungry?


For Piglet – an unshakable childhood nickname – getting married is her opportunity to reinvent. Together, Kit and Piglet are the picture of domestic bliss – effortless hosts, planning a covetable wedding ... But if a life looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Thirteen days before they are due to be married, Kit reveals an awful truth, cracking the façade Piglet has created. It has the power to strip her of the life she has so carefully built, so smugly shared. To do something about it would be to self-destruct. But what will it cost her to do nothing?

As the hours count down to their wedding, Piglet is torn between a growing appetite and the desire to follow the recipe, follow the rules. Surely, with her husband, she could be herself again. Wouldn’t it be a waste for everything to curdle now?

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‘A high-wire exploration of control, pleasure and desire’ Chloë Ashby
‘A book that tears at the surface of things to reveal the vast, messy truth of a body with a beating heart’ Catherine Newman
‘It takes audacity, all kinds of courage to produce a novel as ferocious as Piglet. It made me so hungry’ Lamorna Ash


©2024 Lottie Hazell (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Very wise, and so wonderful on food and cooking it should probably come with a hunger trigger-warning. I loved it.

A best debut novel of 2024

A cunning critique of the expectations that society continues to heap on young women.

A deliciously dark tour de force

Some novels just get food right ... Hazell understands just how connected culinary and literary pleasures are ... [There is] much to devour in Piglet: set scenes of stomach-churning awkwardness, razor-sharp analysis of class, even an unforgettable description of food on the verge of rot.

Dark, witty and very well-written (the descriptions of food are reminiscent of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn), Piglet is a satire that explores everything from class to body image

Brilliant on appetite, ambition, secrecy and shame. Engrossing.

An insightful, stomach-churning debut novel about the corrosive power of secrets.

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 ... the “will she or won’t she” isn’t just about the man and the wedding. It’s about whether Piglet ends up embracing a big life, full of richness and variety and good things to eat, or if she lets herself be crammed into that too-small dress.

Sublime descriptions of food... a quirky story of class, appetite and body image

Really not all that

This book really does not live up to the hype. The characters are very one-dimensional and unlikeable and the only 'explosive' bit would have been the 'confession' but that is barely mentioned at all. It is a very pedestrian story and I regret wasting a credit on it.