New Zealander Catherine Chidgey’s 2020 novel, Remote Sympathy, was set in Buchenwald and made both the longlist of the Women’s prize for fiction and the shortlist of the Dublin literary award for its devastating insights into the Nazi propaganda machine and the deadly role played by those who were all too willing to be duped. Now comes Pet, a sly psychological thriller that might seem to require a little less of the reader but saves its most sinister twist for the end.
It’s set largely in suburban, Catholic Wellington in 1984. For her adolescent pupils, charismatic new teacher Mrs Price holds rock-star status. The glamour of her blond curls, red lipstick and white Corvette (“it had no back seat and no boot, so where on earth did she put her groceries?”) is only burnished by the knowledge that her daughter and husband died in a car crash.
She’s also deeply manipulative and fickle in her choice of favourites, however, and protagonist Justine Crieve is extra vulnerable to her charms. Justine recently lost her mother to breast cancer and her father, an antiques dealer, numbs his pain with scotch. When she unexpectedly finds herself becoming Mrs Price’s new pet, it drives a wedge between her and her best friend, Amy Fong, with tragic consequences.
Chidgey is an agile writer, and here fuses pacy storytelling with some resonant metaphors. Musings on memory, inheritance and betrayal are lightly woven throughout, while the era’s casual racism and misogyny, coupled with women’s unquestioning collusion in the objectification of their own bodies, stokes an atmosphere of growing unease.
The drama to come is hinted at early and often but even so, the darkness of the novel’s denouement is hard to fully anticipate. A complicating factor is Justine’s unreliability as a narrator; she suffers from epilepsy, and seizures fog crucial moments. Thirty years on, when a new nurse in her father’s dementia unit reminds her eerily of Mrs Price, she’ll still be unsure about how things really ended.
As satisfying a narrative as Pet is, lingering uncertainty is the source of its real power, enabling it to maintain its hold over the imagination long after the final page has been turned. It’s also what makes it so chilling because, in the absence of such certainty, for Justine the story can never truly be over.
Pet by Catherine Chidgey is published by Europa Editions (£14.99) in the UK and in Australia on 1 August ($32.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
