The narrator is a poor young girl keen to work and great at giving massages, the sort of girl men tend to exploit. Adding to her problems is the fact that not only is she putting on weight, she is acquiring pig-like characteristics. Abandoned by her boyfriend, she buys a guinea pig and a small dog. She eventually takes to sleeping out. Slaughter is a recurrent theme in her nightmares. Her next boyfriend is more tolerant; besides, he's a werewolf. Sick, possibly pornographic, Pig Tales, a hit in France, is very clever, very funny and curiously moral. Darrieussecq attacks society and mankind, particularly men, and her knowing little fable, though perhaps not quite as shocking as she appears to think, works largely through the sympathetic, likeable pigheroine.
