However, when Pet appears, their telepathy provides yet another avenue for Jam to communicate her thoughts and feelings. Jam spends much of the story using sign language with those around her. Her muteness was an inclusion I hadn’t seen before, where a character chose to speak only when she deemed it necessary. (20)Īt the center of the narrative is Jam, a selectively mute young woman. Readers are asked the same question put to Jam and Aloe: are we too afraid to see the unseen and to know the unknown?įorgetting is how the monsters come back. Against the wishes of her mother, Bitter, and father, Aloe, the strange pair begin their hunt for the monsters they believe were defeated. Communicating telepathically, Pet tells Jam that her best friend, Redemption, is in danger and only she and Pet can seek out the monster that threatens him. The revolution worked to rid Lucille of beings called “monsters” by way of “angels.” Or so Jam’s family believes. Before Jam’s world is altered forever, she lives in the aftermath of a revolution in Lucille, a utopian city. Akwaeke Emezi’s young adult fantasy novel Pet follows Jam, a selectively mute trans girl, as she embarks on a hunt with Pet, a creature that emerges from one of her mother’s paintings after drops of her blood meet its surface.
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