Member Review

In 'Pet', Catherine Chidgey offers a masterful study of power, control and abuse set in a New Zealand Catholic primary school in the 1980s. We are first introduced to the narrator Justine as an adult in 2014 as she cares for her father who is suffering from dementia, before she looks back on her final year of primary school when she and her classmates fell under the spell of their attractive and charismatic teacher Mrs Price. Mrs Price likes to have favourites, and Justine and her classmates are only too happy to compete to be her "pet"; Justine's status of class favourite appears to be bolstered by her widowed father's blossoming relationship with Mrs Price but a spate of petty thefts create a growing sense of conflict and unease between the children and leads Justine to question Mrs Price's actions.

I found this an utterly compelling read which works both as a taut thriller and an insightful exploration of the particular vulnerabilities of childhood, especially for girls like Justine and her classmates on the cusp of adolescence. Chidgey captures the anxieties and social pressures facing girls of this age perfectly, as well as specific factors relating to religion and ethnicity. In many ways this novel is reminiscent of Muriel Spark's 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', but Chidgey is prepared to take the consequences of Mrs Price's narcissism somewhere even darker. As the novel progresses it takes on a nightmarish quality as Justine becomes increasingly convinced that things are not as they should be but is unable to convince anyone else in authority of this and continues to doubt herself.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this superb novel to review.