September reading standouts: a coming-of-age mystery from New Zealand, a powerful Jamaican memoir, and a darkly humorous feminist look at life in rural India
Pet
By Catherine Chidgey
Europa Editions: August 8, 2023
$18.00, 332 pages
Pet is a psychological mystery (but not quite a thriller) involving a 12-year-old girl, Justine, who is enamored of her charismatic new teacher, Mrs. Price. Set in New Zealand in 1984, it offers a portrait of growing up in a slower and simpler time, yet one that is no less complicated when it comes to the desire to be understood and liked by peers and certain adults.
Mrs. Price is too charming by half, walking the fine line next to unsettling creepiness. Her unethical behavior has the plausible deniability essential to a gaslighting control freak. She manipulates the students individually and as a class, exploiting their insecurities, petty jealousies, and shifting alliances. Yet her young charges adore her and compete for her attention and approval.
She selects a well-behaved or high-performing student to be her special helper, generating envy and resentment among the helper’s classmates. But then she passes the privilege on to another student in a seemingly random manner, to the students’ confusion and distress. The tension and rivalries increase when students’ belongings are stolen, one by one. Everyone has been victimized by the class thief except Amy, the sole Chinese-New Zealander and Justine’s best friend, making her the object of suspicion. This mystery leads to several complications in Justine’s life involving her teacher, friends, and widower father.
Pet is a dark, tense, and thought-provoking read with an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
By Safiya Sinclair
Simon & Schuster: Oct. 3, 2023
$28.99, 352 pages
Poet Safiya Sinclair’s memoir of her upbringing in Jamaica is as good as memoirs get. She describes with unblinking honesty what it was like growing up in a house ruled by her tyrannical, misogynistic father, a strict adherent of Rastafarianism. Her mother saved her by providing her with books on the sly, at great risk to both of them.
How to Say Babylon also stands out for the hypnotic quality of Sinclair’s prose (not surprisingly) and its powerful sense of place. Eventually, Sinclair escapes to the U.S., where her incisive mind and aesthetic sensibility combine to make her a standout student and award-winning writer. In 2016, she published her debut poetry collection, Cannibal. How to Say Babylon is an exceptionally absorbing and compelling read. Highly recommended.
The Bandit Queens
By Parini Shroff
Ballantine Books: January 3, 2023
$28.00, 352 pages
When Geeta’s abusive husband disappears, residents of her Indian village believe she killed him. When she realizes they now respect and fear her, she keeps the truth to herself. But then a woman asks her to help murder her horrific husband, she reluctantly agrees. Thus begins a darkly hilarious story of a group of Indian women fighting back against widespread misogyny and taking control of their own lives. Geeta is inspired by the exploits of the actual Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi, a lower caste Robin Hood who went on to become a politician before being assassinated in 2001 at age 37.
The Bandit Queens is both a story of the power and complexity of female friendship and the injustices caused by India’s caste system, sexism, and corruption. Although it has serious things on its mind, it reads like a revenge thriller and is further enlivened by some very funny dialogue. Shroff, a Bay Area attorney, has written an impressive debut that will keep readers turning the pages to find out what crazy thing will happen next.