Pet

"FAULTLESS." -The Guardian *** "A SLY PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER." -The Observer

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.

Set in New Zealand in the 1980s and probing themes of racism, misogyny and the oppressive reaches of Catholicism, Pet will take a rightful place next to other classic portraits of childhood betrayal: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Go-Between, Heavenly Creatures and Au Revoir Les Enfants among them.

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"Catherine Chidgey mobilises the misgivings shared by all children who love and lose, the fear of being odd, the longing to be special, the horror of being supplanted. Pet is a novel hard not to swallow entire in one go, by when the reader will be full of hooks and wary as an old pike."

' - Candia McWilliam

'"Chidgey again displays her prodigious talent for psychological suspense and minutely evoking past eras.... Faultless."' - The Guardian

'Unnervingly realistic... a chilling tale of childhood vulnerability and violence.' - Financial Times

'"A sly psychological thriller... Chidgey is an agile writer, and here fuses pacey storytelling with some resonant metaphors."' - The Observer

'"A lingering, haunting book, which belongs on the shelf with We Have Always Lived in the Castle or My Brilliant Friend - a landmark in the small but potent canon of contemporary novels about unusual girls reckoning with themselves and the world around them."' - The New York Times

'"Beguiling.... Chidgey's writing is confident and controlled as she pushes the novel towards its dramatic conclusion."' - Literary Review

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Catherine Chidgey’s novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific). In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. Catherine has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. She lives in Ngāruawāhia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. Her novel Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

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