🚀 Summary

Wild Pork and Watercress is set in the New Zealand bush and follows two characters Uncle Hector, a grouchy father figure, and Ricky Baker, a juvenile delinquent overweight Maori boy now in the foster care of Uncle Hector and his wife. When Social Welfare threaten to take back Ricky, he and Uncle Hec flee into the impassable bush. Crump takes you on a perilous ride to survive the vagaries of the weather, hunting wild pigs for food, and out-smarting the police search party. Despite hardships, a bond of trust and love blossoms between the curmudgeonly old man and his introverted young partner.

🎨 Impressions

Uncle Hec and Ricky are two characters that will stay with me for a long time. I love Ricky! I mean he’s a 15-year-old reading The Thorn Birds in the jungle! Truly cool. It’s a book that is entertaining from start to finish. I watched the film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople which led me to this book. And I think the book and the film are wonderful works in their own right. I strongly recommend both.

🕵 How I Discovered It

The movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople led me to the book.

✍️ My Favorite Quotes

“I’d pinch out my candle and lie there in the dark, listening to the Apopo river talking away to itself in mangled voices beyond the window, and working out the best way of running away from there- just in case I needed to later on”

“The bush had us so absolutely outnumbered in every direction you had to have respect for it.”

“Urewera Rain, it doesn’t fall in drops like ordinary rain; it starts like a bucketful of marbles being tipped out on the roof and then it’s a continuous stream of white lines, hissing and splashing into the bush, beating everything flat and keeping it there, bouncing spray off every surface.”