Not just fantasy, but a unique blend of 'clear-minded surrealism' and mischievous earthy satire, directed to achieve a powerful end...
Philip Goddard wrote five novels from 1990 to 1993, and Dead Pigs is the second of these. He was at that time gestating as a significant symphonic composer, and he approached his literary works as though they were music compositions, indeed all five novels and some of his short stories and poems actually being the literary equivalent of complex, organically structured symphonies, in which ideas, phrases and even individual words are treated like melodic motifs in such a symphony. At that time his particular model of symphonic organization and structuring was the late symphonies of Sibelius and especially the symphonies of the 20th Century Danish composer Vagn Holmboe - though Goddard's own musical symphonies, when they did come, were more diverse in approach.
Each of the novels defies standard (say, BISAC) categorization, overlapping equally with a number of categories - which means that labelling with any one of those categories would misrepresent the respective work.
N.B. This novel is not the 'Dead Pigs' by Michael Maus, alluded to in the Author's first novel. That 'Dead Pigs' would be too dangerous for anyone to contemplate writing!
A mystery sausage-thrower's activities culminate in a dead pig being pushed over a wall into Mrs Mawkish's garden - an especial cause for concern as the devil appears to be involved. A piglet is smuggled out of Pukesters bacon factory during a Hogleigh Women's Institute outing. This grows up as Alice the endearing pet of the Crunt household. Behind the scenes, Mike Mousley is running a sophisticated computer model of the town of Hogleigh and its inhabitants. With these three themes this bizarre and complex black satire starts its exploration of human sense and nonsense, of love, generosity and diabolical nastiness, and, above all, of responsibility and irresponsibility. As Geoff Wurdling, the man who smuggled the baby Alice from Pukesters, recognises, "In every person is a spark of 'God' - it's just that sometimes that spark takes a bit of finding".
Once again there are reports that the ARA is extending its terrorist campaign from Northern Animalrightsland to the British mainland. As though that were not enough for the police to contend with, some of the most decent of Hogleigh's policemen are killed in a Poll Tax riot: PC George Crunt meets a particularly shocking and grisly death at the hands of a band of skinheads. Local opposition to Alice (yes, the pet pig), with a pub-bombing incident along the way, culminates in a lynching in which Alice is hanged - an undignified and harrowing scene.
Behind an increasingly convoluted sequence of bewildering happenings, including the odd 'shocking' scene, Mike Mousley, who ceases to be amused by the idea of pigs flying, continues to be addictively, unhealthily absorbed in his Hogleigh computer model. But the writing's on the wall for him, and he's in for some horrible shocks (including waking up from an erotic dream to find himself being ravished by a pair of severed hands), which lead on to an unthinkable ultimate confrontation... The final pages, for better or worse, are probably unlike anything you've seen in a novel before.
About the Author: Philip Goddard, born 1942 in Harrow Weald, Middlesex, UK, has always had a great, wide and penetrating natural history interest and affinity with wild places, frequently getting out hiking, photographing nature and wild scenery and nowadays making sound recordings of a wide range of natural soundscapes, many of which he has put up on commercial CDs. He is also a symphonic composer, with ten symphonies and various orchestral, choral and instrumental works to his name. However, a particular priority of his for some years now has been developing and maintaining a particularly challenging website entitled 'Self Realization & Clear-Mindedness', which cuts through all the world's spiritual, mystical, metaphysical and self realization traditions and disciplines - yes, it is indeed challenging! He must be doing something right in his life, because, in his seventies now, he still hikes up to some 23 miles and 1200 metres of ascent in a day, and, with the Alexander Technique, he walks in a brisk, loose, flowing and light-footed manner that would put even most teenagers to shame!
