Yet this idea also underlies the novel’s poetic complexity. We’re reminded of the simplicity of it all: Monsters hurt people, angels can save us. There was a revolution and, in the end, the angels won. Once there were monsters everywhere in Lucille.
Emezi opens “Pet” with an evocation of the struggle of good against evil. The city represents a sacrifice redeemed, a battle won - but not forever. Lucille is more than a safe space for Jam. In Akwaeke Emezi’s beautiful, genre-expanding debut young adult novel, PET (203 pp., Make Me a World, $17.99 ages 12 and up) - a finalist for a National Book Award - the lines serve as both a clarion call and a reminder that utopian communities like Lucille are not only created, they must be fought for and maintained.Īt the center of “Pet” is 15-year-old Jam, a trans girl who is loved and protected by her family, and an entire city. “We are each other’s business we are each other’s magnitude and bond,” the verse continues. "Like L'Engle, Akwaeke Emezi asks questions of good and evil and agency, all wrapped up in the terrifying and glorious spectacle of fantastical theology.“We are each other’s harvest.” For the people of the fictional city of Lucille, these words, written by the poet Gwendolyn Brooks in homage to the great Paul Robeson, are the battle cry of their revolution. This award-winning novel from a rising-star author asks: What really makes a monster, and how do you save the world from something if no one will admit it exists?
No one has encountered monsters in years, though, and Jam's quest to protect her best friend and uncover the truth is met with doubt and disbelief.
Pet has emerged from one of her mother's paintings to hunt a true monster - and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption's house. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature who some might call monstrous but, in reality, is anything but, she must reconsider what she's been told. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with the lesson that the city is safe for everyone.
There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. The award-winning, genre-defying novel by the New York Times best-selling author of The Death of Vivek Oji that explores themes of identity and justice and asks: How do you share the truth when the world around you is in denial? Pet is a nesting doll of creative possibilities." ( The New York Times )
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