Pet

Jam lives in a city where, a generation ago, the "angels" (members of the community who fought for the greater good) called out and brought to justice all the "monsters" (billionaires who exploited their workers, murderers, rapists, corrupt politicians,...). Lucille is now a city free of monsters and free from the fear of them. Or so everyone thinks. But relaxing into the feeling of safety in such a utopia can be problematic, and Jam, who is just a kid, comes face to face with the reality of seeing what others do not see, and with hidden monsters.
Oooh, this is a good one, folks. A fantasy in which utopia and dystopia are on a sliding scale and you never really feel that you can get your footing, where monsters and angels are difficult show more to discern with your eyes, and it's all told in a beautifully strange way. I also love love love the wonderfully nonchalant way in which multiple characters represent various LGBTQ+ identities; they are intricate parts of the story, but their identities aren't the story itself. Highly recommended. show less

“We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

This book hit all my sweet spots and the narration of the audio version by Christopher Myers was oh-so-good. Highlights for me: well-represented gender and neuro- diversity, as well as diverse families; no corny love story, the only crush is the one the protagonist has on the librarian; speaking of which, this book feels like an homage to libraries as well as a love letter to artists and those who embrace imagination; and it highlights the work of black, female writers such as Brooks and N.K. Jemisin, rounding out the diverse black community it portrays. It handles a difficult topic with sensitivity, forcing the show more reader to think about evaluating people's actions over their presentation, and asks them if they're brave enough to look for the truth, to see the unseen, however difficult it may be. show less

As I was reading this I was thinking "this is one of the best books I've ever read". I couldn't put it down. Loved the artistry/imagery of it. And the mind-stretching thoughts about what we call "ugly" and fear, and what we don't want to see. It was also kind of heart-pounding pacing. So. Good.

I wanted to like this YA novel so much better than I did (especially since it features a trans girl but is not about being trans). It started out pretty wonderful, and I still think the premise and theme are pretty cool. The book is set in Lucille, a near-future city where all the monsters (that is, people who hurt other people, especially those who hurt others based on their race) are gone and the angels (leaders) who led the revolution are revered. But in a world with no monsters, who will recognize any new monsters who come among us?

Jam, the seventeen-year-old girl at the center of the story, lives a happy life with her parents and hanging out with her best friend Redemption. Until one day Pet, a monster (angel?) in one of her show more mother's paintings, steps out of the painting and tells Jam there is a monster (person) in her community who must be dealt with. Jam has to deal with deciding whether to believe Pet, what to tell Redemption (whose family Pet claims is harboring the monster Pet's after), and what to do with the monster she and Redemption find in his home. Okay, good stuff, with some compelling, if not *super* nuanced metaphors going on. But then it falls apart when the monster Pet is hunting is revealed.

It turns out that Redemption's uncle has been sexually abusing Redemption's younger brother. And that is for sure one of the most monstrous things that humans do to other humans. But the thing is, it *isn't* "monstrous," which isn't to say that it isn't horrific and appalling. Sexual abuse is *human*, in that it is a thing that humans do to humans. And the book just doesn't grapple enough with that for me. It calls what the uncle does "evil," and it *is*, but that doesn't make it not also *human.* When you set aside some human behavior as "monstrous," you fail to recognize that that monstrous behavior is part of humanity. This is fundamentally human evil, and I don't think Pet deals enough with the fact that the monsters in the book (all our monsters) are *us.* At least it didn't read as such to me. The uncle is tortured, and there's some talk of rehabilitation (for all the monsters), but *that* is what I really wanted to hear more about. What do you do when you find the monster (us)? How do you reconcile the fact that some people are monstrous, but still people? For a book that is so much about how we must look at what is evil in order to continue to *be able* to see what is evil, I was expecting more about what we do when we realize that what we see when we see evil is not some othered monster but the very humanity we're all a part of.

This won many awards, and I did so love the beginning. So I wonder if I missed something. It brings up such a tough, tough subject, one I think most of us do shy away from looking at because it is *so* awful, but then the treatment of that subject left me feeling unsatisfied with the book's whole treatment of human evil. show less

"Forgetting is how the monsters come back."

"Do not be afraid." Jam lives in Lucille, a town where angels have banished their monsters. Jam lives with her parents, Bitter and Aloe, and is best friends with a boy called Redemption. When Jam cuts herself on a piece of metal embedded in one of her mother's paintings, she brings it to life: a terrifying creature emerges and declares that there is a monster in Lucille after all - and it's in Redemption's house. Jam's parents tell her to send "Pet" back into the painting, and Jam lets them think she has, but in fact she asks Pet to stay and hunt the monster, telling Redemption about the hunt but not about the monster's location.

Quotes

[Bitter had taught Jam] that a lot of things were manageable show more as long as they were honest. (7)

Whenever [Jam] was really scared or freaking out, the same thing always happened: she began to dissociate, reality loosening around her like a hammock deconstructing itself, spilling her out into sands of nothingness. (45)

If she hadn't gone numb, then she might have been frightened, but nothing matters when it's not real. (46)

The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see. If you do not know there are things you do not see, then you will not see them because you do not expect them to be there. You think you see everything, so you think everything you see is all there is to be seen. (Pet to Jam, 71-72)

The truth does not care about what you want....A thing that is happening happens whether you look at it or not. (Pet to Jam, 95)

...everyone's always braver when they think they're the hero. (110)

How do we know we're going the right thing?
There is no right thing. There is only the thing that needs to be done. (Jam and Pet, 160)

"Your angels are monsters, your world is corrupt, and you want a chance?" (Pet to Jam, 185)

Is an angel not always a hunter, is a hunter not always an angel? As long as the target is a monster. (Pet to Jam, 202) show less

"There was a monster here---how was anything supposed to even seem safe again? Especially when none of them had any idea who the monster was. They were probably walking around in plain sight, hidden nicely by smiles and...optimism."

After the Sandy Hook shooting, I had a conversation with a neighbor about how I thought it was important to recognize that, while the shooter's actions were heinous, reprehensible, unforgivable, he's still a human being. We can debate how to deal with him, but by dismissing him as evil or somehow "other," we're ignoring the fact that people who do evil things are among us and of us. By disowning them, we risk disavowing our responsibility to prevent the crimes they might perpetrate.

My neighbor completely show more dismissed the idea, referring to the shooter as "an abomination."

In the past year or so, it has come out that at the time of this conversation and over the span of more than a decade, this neighbor perpetrated crimes against children, crimes detailed in part in newspaper articles that I cleared from my browser history so my children wouldn't stumble upon them (my spouse and I are talking to them about the situation, we just don't want them to see these articles without us there with them)

I wonder, does this neighbor apply his "abomination" worldview to himself? Or does he view himself as human but flawed? Moreover, how do I view him? I really don't know yet. I'm still working through the fact that this happened right across the street.

I think that part of the reason this novel resonated with me is that, like the characters in this novel, I'm feeling fearful, second-guessing my judgments about people, especially those who have access to my children. Like these characters, I feel an uncomfortable pull towards revenge even as I recognize that vengeance isn't the same as justice and that by mistaking the two, we risk becoming monstrous ourselves. What is the response that won't just remove one monster from the equation but will prevent others from springing up in their place?

Myth-like and a little reminiscent of Pan's Labyrinth, this novel hit me hard with the reality of how monsters and angels and justice and violence and utopia and dystopia are all jumbled together, how complacency hides monsters, and how we can miss seeing something even when we're looking for it. Emezi's characters are rich and flawed and passionate. As I'm reading, I want to know what happens to them, I'm rooting for them and confused with them and hoping they can sift through the many variations of "right."

How do we know we're doing the right thing? she asked.
There is no right thing, Pet replied. There is only the thing that needs to be done."

show less

Pet is a YA utopian fantasy that is both deep and shallow, a running stream that conceals depths. Jam is a teenage girl in the city of Lucille. It's after the revolution, all the monsters are gone, and angels are running the show. The details of "how" are vague, but the consequences apparent. Cops and billionaires are gone; racism, crime, and exploitation solved problems. Jam is trans and autistic, and that's not a problem in her life.

Things are pretty good, until Jam accidentally spills blood on her mother's latest artwork and summons a seven-foot tall horned and feathered creature with a voice like steel and fire and her mother's severed hands that calls itself Pet. Pet is a hunter, and their message is that the monsters are not show more gone. A monster is in the home of Jam's best friend Redemption, and she has to find it and stop it.

The plot follows a quickly paced three act structure. In Act I, Pet arrives, Jam's parents Bitter and Aloe try and ignore its message and get Jam to send it away, and Jam decides to follow the call to adventure. In Act II, Jam navigates her friendship with Redemption and how to reveal both this supernatural being and its dangerous mission. In Act III, they confront the monster, a sexual predator, and bring about justice.

There's a lot to like about this book. I like the politics: Black, Queer, Autistic, Utopian Abolitionist. The fantastic elements are well done. The basic points, that monsters can look like anything and anyone, that the apparent protection of secrets lets harm fester, and in the revolutionary slogan that "we are each other's harvest", are all lessons worth learning.

But the flaw of YA is a kind of moral simplicity. Any Utopian project must reckon with Solzhenitsyn's Line. "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy then. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" In 2025, evil people are very apparent, acting with impunity everywhere. I'm personally a strong believe in the theory that forms of misconduct are strongly linked, that an organization that tolerates sexual misconduct tolerates professional misconduct as well. Or even more strongly, the end as well as the means of the current political project is to dominate and degrade people.

But yet, are we not all a little monstrous? If only for a moment, only in our thoughts? Doesn't everyone deserve redemption? And how do we find it without literal supernatural beings to guide us? show less