Pet by Catherine Chidgey: A subtle psychological thriller

New Zealander Catherine Chidgey is an award-winning novelist and short story writer whose most recent novel, Remote Sympathy, was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022. Whereas that work dove deep into the darkness at the heart of the Holocaust, Pet is a subtle psychological thriller set mostly in Wellington, New Zealand, and centres around a Catholic primary school. What the two works have in common, however, is Chidgey’s uncanny ability to interrogate the silent, sometimes sinister, workings of the human soul.

The narrator of Pet, Justine Crieve, reflects back on a critical year of her burgeoning adolescence – 1984 – from her present day 2014. Much of the exquisite detailing of St Michael’s school will resonate deeply with Irish readers – the pious Father Lynch with his strap, science lessons instilled with God, the religious iconography decorating the classrooms and the semi-retired nuns supervising the playground. A child’s face is remembered “as white and lovely as a saint’s”. Nonetheless, Chidgey’s acute observations and non-judgmental wit offer a fresh perspective on the familiar.

At the centre of this world is a charming but unscrupulous teacher, the glamorous Mrs Price, who was “younger than our parents and prettier than our mothers” and drove a white Corvette. The children were desperate for her special attention and longed to become her pets. When a thief targets the school, suspicion and deception escalate with dark consequences. Chidgey is excellent at infusing Justine’s memories with a creeping unease. An unreliable narrator – there are black spots in her memory from seizures she experienced – the burgeoning suspense is expertly controlled until the formidable denouement. Those who loved Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie will instantly recognise the narrative power of a charismatic teacher manipulating impressionable youth. Chidgey wields that power to tremendous effect here. Having recently lost her mother, Justine is particularly susceptible, with devastating results.

In addition to the compelling central plot, Chidgey deftly integrates casual sexism; racism; objectification of women; and oppression by the Catholic church into her imagining of this claustrophobic community. Without sensationalising or moralising, these pernicious themes subtly underscore the action and point to the inevitable impact of their acceptance. An excellent meditation on the fallibility of memory, the haunting of the past, and the depth with which childhood impresses upon adulthood, Pet is an accomplished, hugely engaging novel with an impressive ability to compel the reader forward with elegance, verve and style.