“Domestic Pig—Sus scrofa domestica,” by Henry Horenstein, from the series Animalia © The artist

Gustave Flaubert famously wanted to write “a book about nothing,” sustained only by “the internal force of its style.” Are pigs “nothing,” one might wonder? The premise of Ellyn Gaydos’s debut memoir Pig Years (Knopf, $27) may seem unpromising, at least to urbanites. And yet even if you’ve never given farming a thought, Gaydos is a writer of such vigorous eloquence that you’ll find yourself riveted.

To speak of a narrative arc or plot in Pig Years seems beside the point: farming is…