It’s one thing to respect the animals you eat, especially if you have reared them yourself, but what happens if that respect swiftly turns to something deeper, like love? How would you cope with the conflict? Follow your heart and set them free? Or follow your stomach; would the prospect of fine roast ham and homemade pork pies get the better of you?
The urgency of this emotional dilemma is at the heart of Jacqueline Yallop’s memoir; when she moves to a tiny hamlet, Mas de Maury, in south-west France with her husband, Ed, they are keen to embrace every aspect of rural village life, and what better way than buying two pigs to rear for slaughter. “We were entering into the pig-keeping business with hard noses and clear heads, like 19th-century labourers.”
It doesn’t take long for the hard noses to soften, and Yallop is swiftly drawn to her two Gascon Noir pigs with “wiry black hair and pointed faces”, learning as much as she can about them. “The first thing I discover is that pigs are bright, capable, seriously intelligent.” She warms to the difference in their characters, charmed by the personality traits that distinguish them. “We’ve got an extrovert and an introvert. I’m taken with the discovery. It makes me want to know more about each of them. It fuels my obsession with watching them.”
As her pigs flourish and fatten in their French orchard, “the less rational part, which recoils from the prospect of the slaughter” begins to haunt her. With each season, the shadow of the axe lowers and the pigs’ fate draws closer. Will she, won’t she? You can almost hear the clock ticking. She has 12 months to decide, to ruminate and reflect on her surroundings. The life of the 19th-century labourer she hopes to emulate has long since gone, and her description of a vanished way of life is evocative. “Glimpses of forgotten lives seen out of the corner of your eye: in every cluster of houses there are those which are dilapidated… the evidence of many pasts have been left to rot down here.”
It comes as no surprise to learn that Yallop is an accomplished novelist and creative writing teacher. Interwoven with a detailed social history of the pig and its unique status in French culture, the narrative tension is as tightly coiled as a thriller; the rich descriptions of the changing seasons comes down to one single question. Will she follow through or not?
At times, the device can wear a little thin, and there’s a lot here to test vegetarians, even weak-willed part-time veggies like myself. Not because the subject of raising pigs to slaughter offends; rather, Yallop’s soul-searching can sound deluded. Early on, she compares her first pig-keeping starter kit to a rite of passage, “like buying your first makeup, your first bra”. Her excitement does have an air of teenage naivety, especially when she admits, “some things we look at but don’t buy; things for the end, for killing a pig, for managing a carcass”.
Yet Yallop’s honesty about her doubts and inconsistencies is what makes the memoir compelling too, raising broader questions about ethical meat-eating. Not just whether we should respect and know, even love, the animals we eat. But if, given the soul-searching turmoil Yallop experienced, is it natural in our modern age to be killing them at all?
Yallop doesn’t offer any answers but remains on the charming rustic French fence. She can’t be cold-hearted yet she is unwilling to walk away. Is it her conscience pricking her, or weak-willed sentimentality that she’d like to overcome? She keeps us guessing about where her heart really lies, even after her final decision.
Which leaves you thinking that all along she wants to have her cake and eat it. Or in this case her homemade pork sausages and paté.
• Big Pig, Little Pig: A Tale of Two Pigs in France by Jacqueline Yallop is published by Fig Tree (£14.99). To order a copy for £12.74 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
