50 pages • 1-hour read
Piglet
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Part 1, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “98 Days”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of disordered eating.
Ninety-eight days before her wedding, cookbook editor Piglet prepares a lavish dinner for her fiancé, Kit Edwards, and their friends in Kit and Piglet’s new home in Oxford, England. As she shops for ingredients at Waitrose, an upscale grocery store, she considers how her taste in food has evolved since she lived with her parents. When she met Kit’s family for the first time, she was impressed by the elaborate meal that his mother served and their intellectual conversations. Now, she is pleased to have her own home to host in.
At home, Piglet and Kit prepare their home for guests, using moving boxes covered with a tablecloth in place of a table. Kit tries to pick crispy skin off the roast chicken, but Piglet stops him, offering him a bite of dessert instead. The guests—married couple Margot and Sasha and newly engaged couple Seb and Sophie—arrive as Piglet is finishing one of the two salads she plans to serve. Piglet prepares the table and is annoyed when Margot, who is pregnant, loudly announces that dinner is ready. Before they eat, Kit gives a loving toast to Piglet, who feels overwhelmed by her new life.
After dinner, the group praises Piglet’s cooking skills. Piglet feels slightly insulted when Sophie suggests that she audition for the show Bake Off and by Sophie’s repeated comments about the richness of the food. As the night goes on, Piglet grows tired of the group, especially Kit and Sasha’s loud political debates. When they are finally alone, Kit calls the dinner a triumph and says that Piglet is astonishing.
An interstitial epigraph after Chapter 1 reveals that Kit will tell Piglet a secret 13 days before their wedding.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “20 Days”
Nearly three months later, Piglet wakes up early, thinking about her promise to prepare freezer-ready meals for Margot before her baby arrives. As she lies in bed, she is annoyed by the sound of Kit’s breathing. In the kitchen, she changes a decorative calendar to indicate that it is 20 days until their wedding. She begins to chop up carrots, celery, and onions for a vegetarian shepherd’s pie for Margot, imagining Margot eating the pie and telling other new mothers what a good friend Piglet is.
Kit enters and kisses Piglet on the cheek. She resists the urge to pull away and privately resents him for interrupting her time in the kitchen. Kit doesn’t notice her bad mood and asks about how Piglet’s parents will react to Margot’s pregnancy. Piglet understands his implication—that they are too conservative to understand a lesbian couple having a baby—and asks Kit to remind his parents not to say anything about the pregnancy at their wedding. Kit shrugs off her concerns and begins making coffee in the same space where Piglet is cooking. She snaps at him to get out of her way, and he leaves without responding. Piglet wonders if her annoyance at Kit is really annoyance at Margot, who seems to be slipping away as she and Sasha prepare for their new lives with the baby.
When Piglet delivers the vegetarian shepherd’s pie to Margot, Margot complains about the lentils. Piglet avoids asking questions about the pregnancy, and Margot warns Piglet not to talk about her wedding. Piglet stops to pick up Thai food on her way home, hoping that Kit will accept it as an apology for their fight.
In an interstitial epigraph, Piglet reflects that revealing the secret to her friends will shatter their perspective on her life.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “16 Days”
Piglet wakes up at five o’clock in the morning to exercise before going to work. As she follows the exercise tape, she is keenly aware of how her jumping and sprinting in place subtly shakes her living room décor. When she feels her thighs jiggle, she begins to increase her intensity. After the workout, she studies her body in the shower, pleased with her progress. Kit insists that she eat a banana on her way to work, but she throws it away at the train station.
Piglet enjoys being able to take the train to work, although her home’s proximity to the train station puts them in what her future mother-in-law, Cecelia, deems the wrong side of town. Kit’s parents provided most of the funds necessary for the down payment as an engagement gift, on the condition that they buy a home outside of London. They had intentionally chosen a home near Kit’s parents in Oxford, far from Piglet’s parents’ home in the town of Derby. When Piglet took Kit to meet her parents for the first time, she was embarrassed by their small home and simple ways and inadvertently insulted her mother. Despite this, her parents were proud that Piglet was buying a home and of her career in London.
When Piglet arrives at Fork House, the cookbook publisher where she works, she prepares to pitch a new potato-based cookbook to her boss, Sandra. Sandra reveals that Fork House is hoping to hire a new editor and encourages Piglet to apply for the job. She suggests that the potato cookbook could be Piglet’s first solo project.
In the interstitial epigraph, Piglet worries that revealing the secret to her family would bring her back into their world.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “14 Days”
Two weeks before the wedding, Piglet and Cecelia take the last of a series of eight personal training sessions that Cecelia offered as a wedding gift. Piglet had been stunned and hurt by the gift despite Kit’s insistence that she didn’t need personal training. As they exercise, Piglet watches Cecelia’s tight, toned body and wonders how her own mother would look in exercise clothes. After the final session, Cecelia warns Piglet that marriage is a commitment. When Piglet agrees, Cecelia insists that Piglet has no idea what marriage is like but admits that Piglet will make a good wife.
After the session, Piglet meets Margot for lunch at a fancy bakery. The women laugh about Cecelia’s ominous warnings, and Margot compares her to an over-protective Italian mother. Piglet worries that their boisterous laughter will get them kicked out of the restaurant, and they leave. When Margot asks to stop in a baby store, Piglet feels the energy shift, as it had immediately after Margot shared the news of her pregnancy. Piglet leaves, explaining that she has to buy ingredients for an elaborate dinner that she plans to make for her visiting parents.
Piglet decides to cook for her parents rather than go out to eat because she doesn’t want her parents to feel pressured to buy an expensive dinner. When her parents met Kit for the first time in London, they argued over where to eat and complained loudly about the cost of dinner. Piglet hopes to avoid a similar fight by eating at home.
The interstitial epigraph suggests that Piglet’s elaborate dinner is a stand-in for the life she has built with Kit.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “13 Days”
Piglet carefully prepares the table for her family’s visit, choosing mismatched plates and simple stone serving ware rather than the fancier things she might use for Kit’s family. Kit reveals that he has booked a mini honeymoon for them the weekend after the wedding: a ski trip to France with their friends Seb and Sophie. Piglet is disappointed to be spending their first weekend as a married couple with friends, but her family arrives before she can object.
Piglet’s sister, Franny, enters first with her boyfriend, Darren. As Piglet hugs Franny, she notes how thin she is. Piglet’s parents, John and Linda, are visibly impressed by the size of the house. As Kit takes the group on a tour, Franny pulls Piglet aside and reveals that Darren’s company has gone under and that they are running out of money.
After dinner, Piglet encourages her family to finish off the dips and sides, which will not keep. Her father teases her and tells embarrassing stories about her childhood tendency to eat off of others’ plates. He reveals that the nickname “Piglet” came after Franny’s 13th birthday, when Piglet ate the majority of Franny’s cake. Privately, Piglet recalls that she had been trying to hide the fact that Franny experienced disordered eating. Kit quickly changes the subject.
When her family leaves, Piglet tells Kit that she feels lucky to have found him. Kit insists that they’re both lucky and tells her that, after the wedding, they’ll be each other’s family and won’t have to spend time with her parents. Later that night, Kit admits that he has betrayed Piglet’s trust, although the details of his actions are not revealed. He asks Piglet if she still wants to marry him, and she does not answer.
Part 1, Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The opening chapters of Piglet introduce the novel’s unique structure, which includes short epigraphs between each chapter that hint at future action. These interstitial epigraphs help build tension while also clarifying details from the previous chapter. For example, the first chapter, “98 Days,” ends with an epigraph offering an ominous warning: “He would tell her thirteen days before their wedding, and she would feel his words lodge like a shard of bone between her ribs” (19). The threat of this revelation forces the reader to reconsider the optimistic tone of the first chapter, in which Piglet blissfully looks forward to her wedding to her fiancé, Kit. It also adds suspense to subsequent chapters as the novel moves closer to the 13-day mark. Although Piglet is unaware of how her life is about to change, the reader knows that Kit is hiding something from her, and the resulting dramatic irony adds tension to the novel.
In other instances, the interstitial epigraphs help clarify Piglet’s unspoken intentions. At the end of Chapter 4, for example, Piglet prepares to cook an elaborate meal for her family to celebrate their first visit to her new home in Oxford. Piglet tells her friend Margot that she has decided to cook rather than take the family to dinner because “everyone is more comfortable at home” (51). Piglet describes the last time she took her parents to dinner, suggesting that they have different tastes in food and that their budgets are different. Although Margot seems to accept this explanation, the epigraph that follows the end of the chapter suggests that Piglet “ha[s] made a feast of her life” and wants her family to “look at what [she has] made” (55). This epigraph suggests that, rather than taking her family’s taste and budget into consideration, her decision to eat at home is based on a desire to show off the upper-class life she is building for herself. This is confirmed in Chapter 5, which begins with Piglet working hard to present herself and her home so that her family can “witness her handiwork, her house, her husband-to-be” (58). Her concerns highlight the narrative’s connection between class issues and how Piglet feels The Pressure to Build a Perfect Life, suggesting that leaving her working-class background behind is part of that project. The interstitial epigraph suggests that the claims that Piglet makes in Chapter 4 are not entirely accurate and also helps contextualize her behavior in Chapter 5.
The opening chapters of Piglet introduce the novel’s thematic interest in the connection between Food and Class in Great Britain, as Piglet uses food to try to build an upper-class life and separate herself from her working-class roots. In the novel’s opening scene, Piglet shops at Waitrose, an upscale grocery store, to prepare for a dinner party she is hosting in her new home. As she leaves the store, Piglet’s bags are “heavy” with “Charlotte potatoes, fresh herbs, and a Duchy chicken” (4). Piglet’s ability to discern between different types of potatoes and choose a variety that can only be grown organically suggests a deep knowledge of food and a willingness to pay for the best. Choosing a chicken from Waitrose’s Duchy Organic line also signifies her taste and class: The Duchy line was created in 1990 by King Charles III (then Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall) to sell excess produce from his organic farm in the Duchy of Cornwall. Piglet’s purchase of a Duchy chicken signals her desire to belong to the upper class of British society.
Piglet’s food choices are presented in distinct contrast to her working-class background. She recalls that her mother’s roast chickens “were always anemic, trussed at the legs and moistened only by a gravy that had started life as a spoonful of granules” (4). In this passage, the use of the word “anemic” recalls Piglet’s own “heavy” chicken, suggesting that her family was not able to afford meat of the same high quality. The reference to pre-packaged gravy also contrasts Piglet’s use of fresh herbs to season her chicken: While Piglet has the luxury of using fresh ingredients to prepare meals, her mother relied on pre-made foods that took little time or effort to prepare. The use of the word “granule” in this passage emphasizes this impersonal, almost scientific style of food preparation, which offers a stark contrast to Piglet’s homemade, organic meals. This narrative emphasis on the difference between Piglet’s roast chicken and her mother’s suggests that Piglet's obsession with food is not just tied to her issues with Body Image and the Pressure to Be Thin but also closely connected to her desire to transcend the working class.
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