Pet, by New Zealand author Catherine Chidgey, is my favourite book of 2023 so far. Set in a Catholic primary school in the mid 1980s, it’s narrated by Justine, an 11-year-old girl. Justine’s mother has died recently, and her father is drinking heavily. When we meet Justine, she’s had a recurrence of the seizures she hoped she’d grown out of.

While home life is difficult, Justine is in her element at school. It is the last year of primary school, and the children are enraptured by their new teacher, Mrs. Price. Mrs. Price is younger than their parents, drives a Corvette, and it’s rumoured that her husband and daughter died in a tragic accident. Mrs. Price chooses her favourites, and these students perform tasks for her: cleaning blackboard dusters, picking flowers for vases; even running errands in the town for Mrs. Price at lunchtime. Each child longs to be her ‘pet’, and throughout the novel the ‘pets’ change rapidly; sometimes within minutes.

Cleverly, the reader knows the teacher’s behaviour is inappropriate, but Justine is enthralled and desperate to be special. Mrs. Price invites a small group of girls (her pets) to her house on the weekend, asks them to tell her their secrets and reveal their crushes. She shows them how to apply makeup, and lets them make her up, shave her legs and choose her outfits.

With a new set of friends, Justine rejects her best friend, Amy. Amy is the only Asian girl in their school and town, and she is not popular. When the children’s belongings begin to disappear at school, it looks like Amy is the thief, but Amy begs Justine to listen to her own theory.

Chidgey has written a stunning novel, and Justine’s observations of classroom and playground dynamics are intricately detailed. My early love of Enid Blyton’s boarding school novels and my experience of a mercurial primary school teacher made me appreciate Pet even more.