Martyn Pig

Martyn is this novel's fifteen year old protagonist and narrator. Since he is an unreliable narrator, much of what he says about himself, his experiences and perspectives needs to be considered with at least some degree of skepticism, but there are some things he says that can be regarded as grounded in, again, some degree of truth. For example, there can be little doubt in the reader's mind that he, as he suggests, has suffered a great deal in school, and perhaps in the rest of his life, because of his name. There can also be little doubt that his mother left the family when he was too young to remember much about her, and similarly little doubt that she did so because her husband was a drunken brute. How much of a brute he was, however, must be considered carefully, given that Martyn is, on some...