Four months after the end of The Pigman …, John and Lorraine discover Gus, a sick, lonely old man, living inside Mr. Pignati's house and force themselves on him in friendship. They tell the story [in The Pigman's Legacy] in the same alternating first-person chapters; similarities from the plot (Gus dies at the novel's climax) to small incidents (Gus initiates a psychoanalyzing parlor game as Mr. Pignati did), to vocabulary and jokes … parrot The Pigman, but the strong characterization, credibility, and skilled story development is missing. Gus is stereotypically "feisty"; John and Lorraine seem pallid versions of their former selves, and their narratives are almost interchangeable. The boy who once set off bombs in the school bathrooms suddenly gets along with his parents, defends a janitorial worker from the harassment of fellow schoolmates, and sets out boy scout-like to save a stranger from loneliness. The plot loosely chronicles the wild adventures of John and Lorraine: they gamble in Atlantic City (never mind that they are minors); they provide a priest who performs a marriage ceremony for Gus in an intensive care ward (forget that blood tests or marriage licenses are required); they even manage to bring Gus' dog into the ward. A romance between John and Lorraine, too timid for 16 year olds, is chronicled in clumsily injected sections; and out of nowhere, John professes a lifelong commitment, stretching credibility even further.
Sally Holmes Holtze, in her review of "The Pigman's Legacy," in School Library Journal (reprinted from the October, 1980 issue of School Library Journal, published by R. R. Bowker Co./A Xerox Corporation; copyright © 1980), Vol. 27, No. 2, October, 1980, p. 160.
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