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.
