Lowell

Move over, Babe! Balliet's Vietnamese pot-bellied pig has brought Balliet not only valuable companionship but a new outlook on life, one she believes other people can learn from their pigs. Not only is Lowell smart, strong-willed and affectionate; he has even (at least in the author's view) saved Balliet's life, by driving off a mentally ill neighbor Lowell apparently sensed was on the verge of assault. Lowell ""pushes my nose; I push his back--quid pro quo--we are brother and sister. Further proof that Lowell regards me as a pig is his need to communicate with me in pig language,"" an articulate m lange of squeals and barks. In 24 wide-ranging and chatty chapters, Balliet, a professor of English at Pennsylvania's Kutztown University, shows how the other pigs and piglets in her life--from ""tiny wild piglet"" Ivy Mae to the admirably self-possessed Martini, ""as pink as cotton candy""--confirm and demonstrate their species' virtues. Balliet's Touched by All Creatures gave an account of life with her veterinarian husband in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Her new book brings in another delectable trough's worth of vets-at-home and vets-on-the-road anecdotes. It also permits itself a wider range of philosophical and psychological speculation: ""The pig has given us something no other animal can: a new lease on life--the philosophy of existentialism--by which one can fashion all future decisions."" Readers fond of their own pigs--or of dogs, vets, or farms, or of books about them--may enjoy Balliet's book, even if they remain unwilling to swallow her broadest conclusions whole hog. 34 b&w photos not seen by PW. 10,000 first printing. (June)