The Pig Scrolls

Novelists setting out to be hilarious on every page run a terrible risk of soon becoming very boring, given that the best jokes even from a master of wit like Oscar Wilde still need to be separated by reasonable intervals. But The Pig Scrolls is that very rare thing, a children’s book that aims to be funny from first to last and actually is. Its hero Gryllus is one of Odysseus’s companions who was turned into a pig by Circe but somehow always avoided changing back into a sailor once the sorcery wore off. He can still talk though, and keeps his own cynical counsel as the Greek gods around him find their very existence at stake as Thanatos, the God of Death, proves too much for a gullible Zeus. Gryllus sees what is going on, but is too lazy and opportunistically greedy to do anything about it until he teams up with Sibyl, a lively and fearless junior prophetess at the temple. Their adventures together are ingenious and entertaining, with enough Classical references thrown in to interest readers who want something else as well as a very good laugh. Reminiscent at times of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’, with Gryllus coming back from the dead in order to help patch up the world after an atomic explosion, this smashing book also deserves to find an audience of all ages.