Back to his familiar mischief is the obstreperous creature that romped so riotously through ‘The Pig Did It’, the bestselling first novel in Joseph Caldwell’s Pig Trilogy. But in Mr. Caldwell’s entertaining porcine sequel, ‘The Pig Comes to Dinner’, the porker has some more serious business to attend to.
All of the charming characters of the previous book are present again in this delightful new story. Kitty McCloud has bought an ancient Irish castle with the profits from her popular revisions of classic novels like Jane Eyre, and is now hard at work on her correction of George Eliot’s big mess of a novel the Bloody Mill on the Bloody Floss - the added expletives a measure of Kitty’s consternation. Kitty’s new husband, Kieran Sweeney, is tending the castle’s herd of cows when he isn’t locked in loving, if contentious, wrestling holds with his fiery new bride, his former rival in one of their district’s oldest blood feuds. Kitty’s American cousin, Aaron McCloud, has arrived with his new wife, the former Lolly McKeever, to redeliver to Kitty and Kieran their wedding gift of the troublesome pig, who is not at all welcome at the castle.But over their lighthearted discord hangs a weightier problem - Kitty’s new home is inhabited by two comely ghosts from out of the castle’s troubled past. How this haunting couple is dealt with serves only to embellish the allure and humor of Mr. Caldwell’s uniquely theatrical storytelling.