Kay McKenzie Cooke
Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 342pp, $38
In her novel Pet Catherine Chidgey introduces readers to a world where a sense of distress lurks and tugs, and where seeds of suspense planted in the opening pages continue to grow. There is a fascination in the way the storyline is spun that draws you in and keeps you enthralled, even as the ground shifts, threatening to undermine progress towards a denouement. Pet has all the hallmarks of a slow reveal as the narrator, Justine Crieve, looks back in order to forecast a way ahead. The truth will need to be extracted from the weight of a mass of confusion and doubt that has burdened her from the age of twelve: ‘Though I’ve had thirty years to think about it, thirty years to go over every detail. The great dark hulk of it always adrift in me.’
The narrator delivers her story in the first-person, present tense. The novel begins in 2014. We are in Auckland with Justine, a married, middle-aged woman coping with a father who has dementia. She is also mother to Emma, who is the age Justine was in 1984—the year that comes under scrutiny after Justine is jolted back into her memories following an occurrence at her father’s rest home: ‘I am twelve years old again.’
Jarred by this sudden encounter with a previous history, Justine is left scrambling to reassemble what, if any, childhood innocence existed for her back in the 1980s. We accompany present-time Justine on her journey of recall through a shape-shifting past. It is a past that is mesmerising, mystifying, and sometimes downright terrifying. But it is also, strangely enough, totally recognisable (especially for a reader who has actually lived through that particular period.)
One could legitimately claim this novel’s genre to be a psychological suspense thriller. Yet its depiction of period-era societal values also signals that it’s a work of social commentary. Without compromising any of the story’s momentum, the writer has expertly recreated the atmosphere of a particular decade. Numerous references to social norms taken for granted reveal them as disturbing, even brutal and unjust, to a twenty-first-century mindset. The novel’s allusions to attitudes that existed back then make it obvious how far we have come regarding what is no longer acceptable behaviour.
Some of the memories are powerfully nostalgic and compelling: sheltering inside the large, concrete stormwater pipes of an adventure playground. Cotton wool bumble bees made by the dental nurse. Matchbox cars. Smurf figurines. Elastic skipping ropes. The television show Love Boat. And, perhaps more dubious but arguably spellbinding at the time, the television broadcast of Miss Universe, when New Zealander Lorraine Downes, with her marked Kiwi accent, was the winner. Less appealing are incidents that reflect what, in retrospect, appears to be a worryingly relaxed (to the point of apathetic) acceptance of such things as blatant bullying, racism and misogyny. Because these recollections smack of actual memories and an unflinching authenticity, they make for uncomfortable reading.
The main character’s viewpoint remains immediate, even when she recalls what her life was like as a pre-teen, struggling not only to cope with her epilepsy and grief after the loss of her mother but also with the confusion and anxiety that often accompanies puberty. This is especially pertinent when we learn that the young Justine lacked a supportive, stable adult role model. Most of her peers also prove to be less than ideal friendship material.
Throughout Pet, contrasting qualities of humour and menace, of tenderness and cruelty, of truth and lies run alongside one another. Lively back-and-forth conversations, especially between the children, often provide light relief without any drop in suspense. Fear for the more sympathetic characters and distaste for the odious might find the reader aiming their screaming-at-the-television voice (at least, inwardly) towards characters obliviously heading towards harm. This level of reader involvement suggests that this novel is an immersive read.
An almost claustrophobic sense of doom is offset by the writer trusting the reader to work out some things for themselves. Space is created for us to come to our own conclusions. Hints of some future calamity are left like hanging fruit for the picking:
‘Even now I can see her hugging her knees to her chest. Though I wish I couldn’t.’
‘I suppose there was no going back after that.’
‘Months and months later, after everything went wrong, I found the single blond hair still coiled in the bottom of my breast pocket. It had knotted itself into the seam’s loose threads; not even washing had dislodged it.’
The unstable nature of the narrative is further compounded by suspicions that the narrator, Justine, may be unreliable. Ultimately, however, the reader will not be left entirely in the dark, and any surmise eventually arrived at is more or less guaranteed to be the correct one.
The central mystery harks back to a teacher, Miss Price, who proves well-practised in the art of maintaining an air of sangfroid. A cast of characters, including her unsuspecting pupils and their whanau, orbits around her. They are all located within the milieu of a Catholic school in Wellington. Miss Price (whose behaviour is annoyingly condoned by her somewhat inattentive superiors) has an oddly intense relationship with her students. At whatever whim that appeals, at whatever time, this teacher singles out pupils upon whom she bestows the dubious honour of becoming her pets:
‘We would have done anything for her.’
‘It was like we were sharing a joke, like we were part of a special club’.
When the unsuspecting Justine is offered this privilege of special attention, will it prove to be a poisoned chalice? We need to take into account that whatever happens behind the closed door of the classroom is being conveyed (albeit by an adult remembering back) through the lens of a twelve-year-old who, along with her classmates, is expected to handle daunting stuff. Grown-up stuff. This includes watching a graphic film showing a third-world Catholic being tortured in order to deny his faith. When he doesn’t comply, he is killed by a gunshot to the head. The film is then followed by a classroom discussion led by Father Lynch and supported by Miss Price, which concludes with what appears to be the expectation of personal martyrdom should one ever be faced with a similar choice. Another unfair demand of the pupils occurs when they are requested to write down the name of the pupil they believe is the classroom thief. This pupil is then publicly named, shamed, bullied and ultimately isolated.
Chidgey’s achievement in establishing psychological suspense is remarkable. This is accomplished in part by keeping the reader constantly off-balance with a skilful pick-and-mix of the tender placed alongside the brutal. The result is a palpable level of tension that remains super-tight right to the end. What is true? What is a lie? What is rotten? What is pure? What was simply an inevitable, inescapable example of its time? Descriptions of violence and cruelty shock and unsettle. It is a brave reader who trusts the writer not to stray into the gratuitous by placing before them imagery they cannot handle. And it is a brave writer who trusts that their readers will accept any shock value that is vital to the story.
Despite the book’s inevitable oppressiveness, Chidgey’s nuanced evocations of time and place ensure that particles of light do illuminate the darkness. Effervescent descriptions of the ordinary strike with stun-gun accuracy. A small dog shaking with excitement is described as ‘hectic with joy’. Then there’s the description of how a large, showy bunch of cellophane-wrapped flowers can suddenly look small once unwrapped. Such apt observations of the everyday offset the relentless intensity and drama. The paradoxes of life—the manner in which evil exists alongside goodness, and the way that life still has continuum even in the face of horror—are acknowledged and accentuated through precise renditions of small occurrences and incidents. The description of water being let out of a bath: ‘Then I felt the water shift behind me, and heard the low strangulations of the drain.’ The description of summer grass: ‘Sunburnt grass as light as nothing.’
Ultimately, Chidgey’s expertise as a writer is never in doubt. Pet is a lively, well-constructed mystery with hidden depths and layers for readers to explore and enjoy. Pet not only delights the heart but also gives it the chills. It is the real deal.
KAY MCKENZIE COOKE (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) is a Dunedin-based writer who is the author of four published poetry collections, as well as two independently published novels, both of which are set in western Murihiku. She has recently completed a manuscript for her third western Murihiku novel, Muttonbird Tree House, and is presently working on her fifth poetry collection, as yet unnamed.
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