It doesn't take long for J. O. Morgan to establish the essential strangeness of both the setting and the central characters of this novel. This is one of the strengths of the novel that will remain, and be convincingly sustained, for its length.
“The boy raised his bare arm towards the nearest chrysalis, his skin as pale as the light that came from deep inside the pod, his arm glowing, just as the pod glowed, becoming ever more translucent the closer he came to touching that taut outer membrane.”
Once we realise that we are reading about a society which is made up, in part, of people called larvals who were born from eggs, the fear, for the reader, is that we are going to enter the overly familiar territory in which we see the oppression of a 'lower' strand of society; their otherness defined and regulated by a privileged, arrogant 'higher' strand. But that is never what the novel becomes. Instead, we stay with a very small cast of characters - just two most of the time, Sal and Megan who are central to everything that happens in the book – and follow their friendship from tentative camaraderie through to a singular, supportive tenderness and the eventual fractured dissolution.
The position of larvals in the society with which we are presented in the novel is never explained. Nor is the way in which they came into being. Exposition is not part of Morgan's plan. We are instead introduced to a world that apparently requires no explanation as if this was a realist novel presenting situations that are already familiar to us. All of these decisions work to the benefit of the novel. There are enough descriptions of the larvals to help us realise how much they differ in appearance from the other people with whom they interact, apparently without conflict. This is in part, it seems, because of a forlorn acceptance of their position as people who can never hope to attain any status beyond those they have been assigned. Whether they can take part in whatever government there is in this world, we are never told. A clothing catalogue that Sal manages to acquire gives some indication of the larval's status: “It was not meant for the likes of him. This was adult clothing. Colourful. Elegant. Expensive.”
Sal and Megan work together in an office where the two of them are occupied in folding and filing paper, something for which they are not physically suited: “They had special tools for folding the paper. Their pale grey skin was too dry and would tear if they used only their fingers”. An impulsive instance of shoplifting by Sal has far more implications for Megan than for the culprit and soon we are led to disorienting, ever-stranger happenings, all of them realised in ways that sustain the plausibility of the grim, eerie atmosphere so well created by Morgan.
The paradoxical element of Pupa is that as the novel's details become ever more uncanny – with everything occurring in settings of oozing wetness, clammy sliminess and “shimmering clinging mucosa” - and as the central transformative act is revealed, we begin to realise how close it all is to our own understanding and experience of the world. In essence, this is a novel about wanting to find the contours within which it is possible to find ease and acceptance. A place of welcome and retreat even if there is nobody else there. There is little joy in Sal's life and there is no mention of him ever smiling or enjoying himself. He can't express physical love but he does feel a level of emotion that lends his position a great deal of melancholy. At one stage he imagines what basic comforts -heat and food - he would be privy to if he lived with an old larval woman. Having considered the option, he leaves her flat knowing, as she does, that he will not return. Comfort alone will not decide whatever direction he must take.
Throughout the book, Morgan uses clear, direct language. There is little that is extravagant in his word choices. But that works well for a story that already has enough invention in the scenes we are presented with to hold our interest. It doesn't need adornments. It's sufficient that we see the dilemmas that Sal and Megan must negotiate and find enough in their unfamiliar lives for us as readers to empathise with their exceptional, ordinary lives.