“Pig Years” by Ellyn Gaydos is a poignant and unflinchingly honest memoir that transcends the typical farm narrative. More than just a chronicle of agricultural life, it’s a deeply personal exploration of love, loss, and the relentless cycle of nature in the unforgiving landscape of Upstate New York and Vermont. Gaydos, a working farmer, invites readers into her world, revealing the raw beauty and harsh realities of raising livestock, the backbreaking labor, and the emotional toll of a life lived close to the land. This isn’t a romanticized vision of farm life. Gaydos confronts the brutal realities of animal slaughter, crop failures, and the constant struggle against the elements. Yet, within this harsh environment, she finds moments of profound beauty, resilience, and connection. “Pig Years” is a beautifully written examination of the human-animal bond, the challenges of motherhood, and the enduring power of hope amidst hardship. Readers familiar with the works of Annie Dillard or Wendell Berry will appreciate Gaydos’s lyrical prose and unflinching gaze. It’s a vital read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our relationship with the natural world and the sacrifices that sustain us.
Pig Years
22,67 $
In stock
This captivating memoir is a startling testimony to the glories and sorrows of raising and harvesting plants and animals (Anthony Doerr, best-selling author of All the Light We Cannot See), as an itinerant farmhand chronicles the wonders hidden within the ever-blooming seasons of life, death, and rebirth.
Pig Years catapults American nature writing into the 21st century, and has been hailed by Lydia Davis and Aimee Nezhukumatathil as engrossing and a marvel. As a farmer in Upstate New York and Vermont, Ellyn Gaydos lives on the knife edge between loss and gain. Her debut memoir draws us into this precarious world, conjuring with stark simplicity the lifeblood of the farm: its livestock and stark full moons, the sharp cold days lives near to the land. Joy and tragedy are frequent bedfellows. Fields go barren and animals meet their end too soon, but then their bodies become food in a time-old human ritual. Seasonal hands are ground down by the hard work, but new relationships are formed, love blossoms and Gaydos yearns to become a mother. As winters dark descends, Pig Years draws us into a violent and gorgeous world where pigs are star-bright symbols of hope and beauty surfaces in the furrows, the sow, even in the slaughter.
In hardy, lyrical prose that recalls the agrarian writing of Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry, Gaydos asks us to bear witness to the work that sustains us all and to reconsider what we know of survival and what saves us. Pig Years is a rapturous reckoning of love, labor, and loss within a landscape given to flux.
