Teaching Pigs to Sing

by Cordelia Strube

Rita wants to pop her six-year-old son Max in a baggie with a Ziploc top - so she can preserve his innocence and trust, so she won't have to watch him lose faith in the world. Everywhere she looks, she sees chaos. She fears she can never provide Max with the security he craves. His absentee father, a surgeon, seems to have disappeared somewhere into a war zone. All she can offer is love and loyalty, but will it be enough?
Rita, who does battle with the mice in her cupboard and the fibroids in her belly, is living on the edge of urban normalcy in a disintegrating a mother suffering from a debilitating illness; a sister whose failing marriage is sliding into the sordid domesticity of body hair disgust; a brother enamoured of a God omnipresent in his schizoid mind; and a father wrapped in lottery fever.
Suddenly, an incident upsets the fragile balance between hope and fear in Rita's life, setting in motion events that bring her to the brink of despair.
Teaching Pigs to Sing creates a recognizable world of urban decay - of hospital waiting rooms, donut shops, vandalized cars, stolen goods, scary parks. But in this precarious world, made even more tentative by the inability of men and women to love one another, Strube, with wit and compassion, can still find resilience and glimmers of hope.

220 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Read an interview and an excerpt of Cordelia's new novel, On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light, in Numéro Cinq Magazine: http://goo.gl/9KOheD

Watch a video of Cordelia interacting with students at York University's Canadian Writers in Person here: https://youtu.be/7548Yv5E5qI

Cordelia Strube is an accomplished playwright and the author of nine critically acclaimed novels, including Alex & Zee, Teaching Pigs to Sing, and Lemon. Winner of the CBC literary competition and a Toronto Arts Foundation Award, she has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award, the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Prix Italia, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Strube is a two-time finalist for ACTRA’s Nellie Award celebrating excellence in Canadian broadcasting and a three-time nominee for the ReLit Award. She lives in Toronto.

Reviews

[Dawn Murray · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this because I loved another book by this author but this one I did not enjoy. Though I found the character's pessimism funny at first, it very quickly became depressing. I skimmed the middle, the ending was heartbreaking, and overall it made me feel meh (in general, the opposite of how I want a book to make me feel).

[Caleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent book but after a disturbing incident occurs it's difficult to enjoy the read.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully described short period of time in the life of a single mother with a 6-year old son.
Very well done.

[Lolly K Dandeneau]

Review to follow, need to digest my thoughts until they come out solid to do this novel justice