Pet by Catherine Chidgey
Reviewed by Linda Burgess
“That girl” – and I probably did say girl, because it was 25 years ago – “the girl who wrote about being at Bible class. That was fantastic,” I said. And Bill Manhire, teacher of the Creative Writing class whose students were that day reading from their portfolios, said, “Catherine – yes. She’s the real deal, isn’t she?”
By chance, when In a Fishbone Church was published, snapped up by what was then VUP, I was asked to review it. No problem – I adored it. Her exquisite eye for detail, her evoking of a scene, her innate ability to choose the perfect image. Her wit. A glittering career followed, prizes won here and abroad, most recently for The Axeman’s Carnival – a top read of mine in the last year. And now there’s Pet.
“Pet” – unless one is referring to something with paws – is a creepy word. I’m taken back more than 40 years when a girl I was teaching stayed behind to tell me she was having trouble with her father. “Sometimes I’m his pet,” she said, “And then he gets really mad at me.” My flesh still does a worrying flinch when I remember it. “Pet” is often preceded by “teacher’s” and in this novel, that is what the narrator, 12-year-old Justine, longs to be. With her mother having recently died, and her lonely father, Justine is understandably needy. She’s also a convincing mixture of preternatural wisdom and heartrending guilelessness. She wants to be best girl, usurping Melissa, current holder of that position. She will give up pretty much anything to be the one asked to stay behind and bash Mrs Price’s blackboard dusters clean.