Pet is set
in New Zealand and split over two timelines: 2014 where 42-year-old Justine is reflecting on
her childhood trauma while visiting her ailing father, and 1984 where 12-year-old
Justine is a schoolgirl trying to cope with growing up without a mother.
Justine
narrates the story – setting the scene in a Catholic convent school with her classmates
and their charismatic and beautiful teacher, Mrs Price. All the children admire
Mrs Price, and they all want to be ‘the teacher’s Pet’. When Justine is finally
chosen to be one of ‘the pets’ her world changes in a very believable way
however, as different events occur, Justine begins to sense that something
isn’t quite right.
Justine just
wants what many adolescents want — to fit in at school and be popular — but she
has a lot going on in her life: coping with her mother’s death from cancer,
living with her father’s increasing alcohol consumption, her own epileptic
seizures, all the while having her loyalties tested on a daily basis between her
classmates (especially her best friend Amy) and Mrs Price.
Mrs Price breezes
in like a Hollywood Star with her stylish clothes and her white left-hand drive
Corvette. She praises sincerely, laughs, and offers kind words — just what the
children want to hear — while using her powerful position as teacher to manipulate,
influence, and control the children in her care.
Anyone who enjoys
a character driven read with ominous undertones. It is chilling and suspenseful
and just when you think you have it worked out there is another twist which
leaves you wondering. Justine’s memory and therefore narration is unreliable so
who do we believe?
It is also
a nostalgic read for anyone who was at school during the 1980s. Real events
that took place that I too remembered: Lorraine Downes being crowned as Miss
Universe in 1983, the school dental clinics where the nurses made bees out of
the cotton wool, and the concrete pipe playgrounds.
I love
character driven novels where I am invested in the characters’ lives, feeling
their happiness, their fears, their heartaches, and their sadness. Combine this
with suspense and it was a page turner for me.
I was at school during the 1980s and can relate to what school days were like then, for example, I knew the fear
of being called by the child one above you on the roll to the dental clinic,
and I remember the changing friendships, playground torments and ‘teacher’s
pets’.
I don’t have a criticism–I enjoyed the book from cover to cover. In my opinion, Catherine Chidgey is a great writer, and if you enjoy Pet, you should also read The Axeman’s Carnival by the same author — another great read.
