Reviewed by Alyson Baker
Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine’s sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.
“We would have done anything for her”: Mrs Price, a glamorous teacher in a Catholic primary school in the 1980s, who has her students in thrall. They yearn to be her pet – a position bestowed randomly on a chosen few, and often withdrawn for no reason. Justine is twelve, her mother has recently died, and she longs to be among the chosen. The story of her and her classmates is one of manipulation, cruelty, and grief. It is told in retrospect by her adult self in 2014 – her memories prompted by a nurse in her father’s nursing home having an uncanny resemblance to Mrs Price.
For bullying and jealousy to thrive in the school, there is no need for Mrs Price. The prettiest girls have a clique. Most of the girls have a crush on the most attractive boy, who is cruel and arrogant, and has an entourage. Racism is expressed openly, often to get a laugh. The children are at the edge of puberty – “Blood was coming” – they know their year of being the oldest cohort is coming to an end. They are children but aware of right and wrong, and there is often conflict between their wanting to belong, and their knowing belonging will mean not doing the right thing. But with Mrs. Price exploiting these cruel inclinations and rivalries, the kids don’t stand a chance.
Justine is so finely drawn; she finds pieces of her mother’s writing around the house, but they start to fade away, just as Justine’s memories of her mother are fading – as events in the story start to get out of control, Justine desperately searches for her mother’s words for guidance. Justine has a close friend, Amy. The girls are almost inseparable, but a wedge is pushing down between them. Justine is torn between having Amy or Mrs. Price in her life – she can’t have both. When the latter seems possible, and Amy asks her why she is lying about Mrs Price, Justine weakly replies, it is because if she tells the truth, “She might not like me any more”.
The reader really wants to help Amy, a child who is losing her friend, and who can’t find anyone to be on her side. Another sympathetically drawn character is Dom. Dom is kind, considerate, and sensible – but then we are reading of him through Justine’s memories, so maybe a rose-tinted view? Pet has the reader often wondering about the reliability of memory. Justine’s memories are of a time when she was grieving for her mother, and she also has a condition that sometimes blanks out her knowledge of events. There is a stunning ambiguity in the text at one point: “And then she said I …” committed a crime – who is the “I”, the speaker, or the person reporting what they said?
There is physical cruelty in the book, at one point Mrs Price illustrates biological regeneration by getting a child (as a punishment!) to maim a live animal. But it is the mental cruelty which is incessant. The children writing: Why don’t you kill yourself, I hate you, I wish you were dead, etc. to the scapegoat of the moment. Mrs Price openly accusing a child of theft, shaming them in front of the class – forcing each child to declare an opinion. And her marking schoolwork subjectively, depending on who she fleetingly happens to like.
There is a vacuum of adult support when any of the children finally asks for help. From the headmaster, staff, from the clergy – even from parents who just want their child to “see out the year without making waves”. It is a book about sacrifice; the sacrifice of forgoing some of the things you want so you can do right by others – or failing to do so. And throughout is the sacrificial symbolism of the Catholic rituals. And the symbolism of Catholic art, which produced for me the most moving sentence of the book: The serpent under the feet of St Michael: “its mouth open to receive his golden spear.”
The manipulation of children, or of anyone, to the point where they are welcoming of abuse is disturbing and enraging. Pet is a tense read, one where readers know early on that there are some awful events ahead. And they come to know that Justine has been haunted by insecurity about her childhood experiences since she was twelve. Memories might be unreliable, but they are also unavoidable. Like that single strand of Mrs Price’s hair caught in a seam of Justine’s clothing – “not even washing had dislodged it”.
Pet is beautifully written: the fading of Justine’s mother’s writing, Amy’s family’s garden gradually succumbing to weeds and disorder. Yet other things persisting: the trauma of a nun who had witnessed the shooting of her whole family, the longing of a woman who was abandoned by her mother as a four-year-old, the innocence and cruelty of children, how malleable people can be due to their yearning to be noticed, to be part of an inner circle. Pet is also a murder mystery, and it is plotted accordingly, with some thrilling moments – mostly to do with a locked room!
Pet is an amazing combination of genres, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!
Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here.
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