I didn’t know what to expect from Pet. And as a YA novel, I admit I wasn’t expecting overmuch. How refreshing this world and Emezi as a writer!

While we know little about the world or community that our protagonist Jam lives, we know enough that it sees itself as a kind of post-trauma utopia, one where earlier generations had fought and won out against corruption and violence and immorality. (I couldn’t help but imagine a subtle critique on too optimistic Afrofuturist visions, but it need not be this.) So thoroughly have they convinced themselves that they have banished these enemies (despite their constant honoring of the revolution’s leaders and Jam’s mother inexplicably painting monstrous creatures), that when young Jam herself meets a monster/angel/spirit/subconscious creature that insists a dark enemy is amongst them all, no one believes her. Thus a plot is born.

And this conceitIn literature, allowing a metaphor or unexpected comparison ... More, of a group of characters of diverse means and talents (a sensitively-portrayed and forward-thinking representation of disability and gender here) gathered around a suppressed but still suppurating wound in its history/psyche, one which is growing dangerous (no spoilers), makes for both a fine mystery to solve for a young stumbling sleuth and an awakening to the real flaws in this future society (and, of course, our own).  Of course, Pet the “monster” steals every scene, and its critiques on its inimitable role and on humans in general are easy to accept–perhaps too easy.

Emezi approaches all with a delicacy that I admire. The subject matter is quite “adult” in its reckoning, but one which younger readers nonetheless encounter and seek to understand. And Emezi’s strength as a writer is to bring authenticity to their characters’ emotions (even ones we would call villains) while avoiding the gratuitous or graphic. They do the same for their world, offering its history and principles only insofar as they are relevant to her story. The characters–especially Jam and her friend Redemption (did I mention that even the names are carefully crafted?)–are in the foreground; the rest is for younger readers to make their own connections and find ways forward.

Yes, this is a book of traumas. But yes, this is a book of challenges towards our parents and communities, of empathy and hope for its younger readers.

P.S. I can’t help but mention that anyone who enjoys Pet must certainly also read N. K. Jemisin’s short story “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” which echoes similar themes with different strategies, which is itself an answer to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” which does the same. I suspect Emezi has read them both.