She is selectively mute, choosing to communicate in sign language and use her speaking voice only when necessary. Jam, for her part, unwaveringly defines the parameters of her own existence. Thus begins a tender friendship between a monster and a girl who together set out to hunt a real monster, in a place where the angels have supposedly eradicated them all. The eyeless figure, complete with claws and horns, calls himself Pet. The story eases into action when what appears to be a hideous chimera painted by Jam’s mother, Bitter, is conjured out of a two-dimensional canvas by a drop of Jam’s blood, landing in the seemingly perfect world of Lucille. We all know what monsters are, but, as Emezi puts it, “when you think you’ve been without monsters for so long, sometimes you forget what they look like.”
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. “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.
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