Piglet

It takes audacity and all kinds of courage to produce a novel as ferocious and weird as Piglet. The narrative accelerates like nothing else I've read, opening onto dead-end domestic conformity and then driving us all the way out into the wildernesses, where the possibility for liberation, the fulfilment of desires might be discovered. It made me so hungry.

Lamorna Ash, author of Dark, Salt, Clear

Piglet is a compelling, entertaining novel about wanting - and deserving, and learning to deserve - more. I was particularly taken with the way in which Hazell writes about food, which is described in luxurious and dynamic detail throughout the novel, as central to the story as Piglet herself, and its place in shaping women's inner lives and identities.

Cathy Thomas, author of Islanders

Piglet is luscious and disturbing and propulsive, and I completely devoured it. It's a book about hunger and secrecy and women made small by convention. And it's a book that tears at the surface of things to reveal the vast, messy truth of a body with a beating heart.

Catherine Newman, author of We All Want Impossible Things

Appropriately, I inhaled it. Piglet is an engrossing novel about who and what we crave in life. Rich and tender, moving and rousing, hunger-inducing and inspired. A high-wire exploration of control, pleasure and desire that left me feeling well and truly satisfied.

Chloë Ashby, author of Wet Paint

I read this book in a single gulp, thrilling and horrifying at once. Lottie Hazell takes a butcher’s knife to the pleasure principle, and serves up a deliriously amusing, wanton portrait of self-destruction. A visceral insight into the damage a patriarchal class society can wreak on the stomach. A tale without redemption, but with many troubled pleasures.

Amber Husain, author of Meat Love

Ambitious prose Nora Ephron would be proud of. Hazell captures the subtle class divide in contemporary British life with precision—all while serving the reader a bacchanal of delicious food writing that will have you craving more

Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour

This book! Visceral, brilliantly dark, and so smart. An object lesson in how our relentless pursuit of a tickbox life will never make us happy. Characters that pop, writing you could eat.

Fran Littlewood, author of Amazing Grace Adams

Intriguing, propulsive, delicious and ultimately satisfying: I devoured it in two days, and suffice to say, it’s a book you’ll want on your 2024 reading list.

Claire Daverley, author of Talking at Night

A deliciously dark tour de force

Red

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

Good Housekeeping

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

Daily Mail

Lottie Hazell has managed to create a style, and a character, instantly relatable and readable—while being stunningly original and fully-formed

Foyles, Top Ten Reads for January

A dark, weird, satisfying tale about greed and desire.

i News

Such an interesting, clever read.

Belfast Telegraph

[A] sharp, dark, must-read story about appetite, ambition, secrecy and shame

Daily Mail

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

Financial Times

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.

Sunday Times

A food-filled debut of class and ambition

Guardian

Compulsively readable... Delicious, in every sense of the word.

Elle US

Dark and disturbing

Heat

Satirical and funny… Hazell has much to say about our food-obsessed snobbery and she plates up a deliciously-written narrative, generously peppered with lethal ground glass.

Irish Independent

Hazell’s deft characterisation has enough light and shade to bring Piglet into high definition. The same is true for the side characters, which are commendably vivid for a debut

Irish Times

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

Mail on Sunday

This smart, unique debut about class and the hunger we all feel for a perfect life is so good.

Fabulous

One of the most hotly anticipated books of 2024... Delicious, dark and thought-provoking.

Hello!

This a doozy of a debut. It oozes dark humour, appetites, anger and read-it-through-your-fingers self destruction.

Natasha Poliszczuk, Book(ish)

Piglet is a darkly compelling exploration of what makes a delicious life, and the vitality of hungering for more.

Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure

A dark story of insecurity and control

Best

A debut that needs to be on your radar... A rich, vibrant, visceral book, that is brimming with acerbic wit and mouth-watering food, this is dark, witty and explores societal pressure and body image in an unforgettable way.

Glamour

A best debut novel of 2024

Stylist

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.

Jennifer Weiner, The New York Times Book Review

A fresh take on hunger, class and the weight of expectations.

People

Terrific first novel about a woman's emotional relationship with food. Searingly good.

Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat

Piglet is a sumptuously told novel about being a woman moving through the world, carrying the weight of expectation of how exactly that should look. Brimming with tension, food, desire and shame, Piglet will confront you, surprise you and make you complicit in this expectation.

Lara Williams, author of Supper Club

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

Daily Mail, '60 of the best holiday reads for adults and children'

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

Independent