Pew has turned Catherine Lacey from someone I had never heard of before, to one of my new favourite, auto-buy authors. Her insight into society and human behaviour and relationships is nothing short of astounding, and her writing? Goddamn perfection.

Lacey's handling of race and gender in this book is deft - leaving us with questions and allowing silences to speak loudly and tellingly.

For the first half – I was in love. I adored the prose and thought the structure of the book worked wonderfully to invoke a sense of mounting dread. Catherine Lacey constructs a story that feels more like an extended fable than like a novel – in the best possible way. The story begins when a person is found sleeping in a church’s pew. The people in this small town take them in but as the person is not speaking (and nobody seems to be able to agree what they look like, how old they, what gender they are), it does not take very long for the others to turn on them. The book is infused with a growing sense of dread, as Pew (as they are called by the people who took them in) meets different people who all start telling them their darkest secrets, filling the silence the only way they know how. In the background are preparations for an ominous festival, the purpose of which remains cloaked in secrecy for Pew.

The first few chapters really worked for me, I thought the introductions of the different people and their backstories were intriguing, the prose was incredible, and Pew a sympathetic main character that I could not help but deeply root for. I also appreciated how the people were more archetypes than proper characters (unlike Pew who feels real if vague). I thought this worked really well for the fable-like mood. As this pattern kept repeating (Pew is sent to some person, that person assumes to have knowledge of Pew and then starts telling Pew their story), the sense of dread kept ratchetting up. However, as soon as Lacey started showing her hands and actually filling in the blanks a bit, the story lost its appeal to me.

Additionally, I thought the commentary on gender worked a lot better and was smoother integrated than the commentary on race where the fable-like prose felt ill-fitted. I think, ultimately, the prose was not quite strong enough for me to distract from the problems I had with the book. But when it worked for me, it worked so brilliantly that I am very glad to have read this.

I really really liked this book. The mystery, the incentives, all added to the aura of this book. The Main character was really covered in a mist of mystery which elevated my interest. The other characters were equally readable. I would definitely recommend this book!
Thanks to the publishers for this ARC.

This is an odd, alienating but haunting short novel, which describes the response of a community in the American South when a mysterious and silent stranger, whom they name "Pew", appears one day sleeping in a church. It's a powerful morality tale, difficult to engage with in places (which is probably the plan) but also beautifully written. Writing of a Quaker meeting, the narrator comments "in the end no matter what a person says in that room, it will always be misunderstood, then forgotten, which is something which could be said about the book . An oblique commentary on American society (gender, race, religion, identity), it's setting is timeless but also contemporary, which brings you up short constantly. The (almost) closing Forgiveness Festival is almost a symbol too far, but seems a fitting conclusion to this strange book, which is both to be enjoyed and admired.

Less of a monologue stream of consciousness and more of a detached invasion of this small town, the narrator has almost gone into ‘free-cam’ mode, zooming all over the place probing confessions out of the townspeople, but then Pew is also a video game with a silent protagonist, like an alien from Star Trek who is so advanced they are what we are to amoebas and as a result have to take on corporeal form to communicate a progression of the narrator as accidental, as the disrupter, but spiritually instead of sociologically or philosophicaly, less of an intrusion into a politicalised socio-economic environment, there is no narrative to disrupt though as it is constructed around pew instead of the community that pew imposes themselves upon, pew is described as not much of a talker, but doesn’t try to understand the world, doesn’t attempt to decipher, to project codes onto the world in order for the world to make sense to them, the character of Pew narrates, an exposition of the great white myth ‘through GOD all things are possible!’ A community working to build an identity but also deconstruct one, how the need to know everything is an act of damnation, people always want to know, people complain about the liberties taken against their privacy but have no issue gossiping and invading the privacy of others, but then they feel entitled to know everything about a fictional character, if they are confused at the smallest detail, they are not interested anymore, this is how they treat people, this is how the character of PEW is treated, instead of the community finding peace and tranquility in the figure of PEW, like the would of say PEW were clearly THE SON OF GOD, CATHERINE LACEY has created a novel with an air of THE IDIOT, Pew may not be implicitly driven to madness of the subtle feel of Folk Horror creates something uncanny, I enjoyed it but cusps the line of Rachel Cusk/Post-Modernist pretension but when it is really good CATHERINE LACEY writes like Ali Smith

I am sure like many people on this site I have performed many job interviews – I have been on training courses and observed other’s interviewing, and looked for good interviewing techniques: open ended questions, competency-based assessments, reflective listening, questions about most recent appraisals, DIY-360s, for example, are all things I have adopted into my standard practices. But the most effective technique I have learnt is silence: ask a question, allow the interviewee to answer and then simply stay silent: most interviewees will automatically fill the gap by extending their answer and normally in their subsequent thoughts move away from their prepared response and reveal their actual thoughts and candid views.

It is this principle, together with the seemingly unquenchable human desire for delineation - to draw boundaries (often but not exclusively based on physical characteristics) that lies at the central foundation of this book.

The story is set in an unnamed town in the American South (we assume in the author’s native Mississippi). An almost entirely silent stranger of indeterminate sex, race and (to a lesser extent) age is discovered sleeping on a pew in the town church. It is the week before the major annual event in the cycle of the small town’s traditional, closed, church-based, white, community – the Forgiveness Festival, and despite (or perhaps because of) this and the tension it engenders amongst them, the people decide to take in the stranger (who – Paddington style - they christen Pew). They say they want to assist Pew but want to begin with determining their sex, race and age so that the assistance can be appropriate both for Pew and those who help Pew.

But as Pew does not respond to, or collaborate with their efforts, the townsfolk’s interactions with her quickly lead to them talking about themselves. The book is written in the first person, but unlike in say Rachel Cusk’s recent trilogy, where Faye’s indirect reportage of other’s speech is actually a way to reveal the truth of her own life, here the thoughts of the town’s people are revealing of themselves only, hinting at the secrets and tensions which underpin their community – Pew themselves remains an enigma both to the reader and to themselves.

Pew’s real skill, alongside her silence, is to identify what she calls the “silent things in people”, to “see through those masks meant to protect a person’s wants and unmet needs.” – often gaining a strong first impression of what really lies at the heart of a person’s behaviour, posture, appearance and speech.

It is hugely to the author’s credit that she can make an effectively absent narrator one that is so present to the reader.

This is a book whose central message is as enigmatic, immune to simply delineation and open to interpretation as its narrator.

And perhaps I think most fascinating of all - just as Pew's silence holds up a mirror to those she meets, I think inevitably reviews of this book may say more about the reviewer than the book. However I want to comment briefly on three areas:

The Ones Who Walk Way from Omelas

The first is the book’s epigraph – taken from the ending (importantly I think not the body) of Ursula Le Guin’s brilliant short story “The Ones Who Walk Way from Omelas”. Pew themselves is clearly connected to Omelas – a flashback makes that clear – although in what way is not clear: is Pew a freed scapegoat child (the one whose imagined miserable post freedom life serves to justify their continued detention and punishment); or is Pew one who gazed on the child, and walked away from Omelas, searching for the hard to imagine different place.

At one point, and expanding the cell in which the Omelas child is trapped into a different form of being trapped in a cell, Pew speculates

"I shut my eyes and imagined a life in which only our thoughts and intentions could be seen, where our bodies were not flesh but something else, something that was more than all this skin, this weight. ….. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t hold us back the way they do here. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t determine our lives, the lives of others, the ways in which one life could or could not meet the life of another. We would not have to sleep or slam doors or exist in these cells that eat other cells and die anyway, these cells we live in."

Later, when the townsfolk make a call on Pew’s race and temporarily move her to the black side of town, she meets the mother of a missing child, a child who Walked Away from the town, in this case it seems starting from a visit to a zoo (again an incident of viewing something trapped in a cell, a refusal to subscribe to societal norms of division, to accepting the subjugation of others – in this case not just zoo animals but livestock – as the necessary underpinning of its happiness)

"they weren’t any different from him either and he was just so sure about it. It was causing him pain, this idea, it was clearly upsetting him, all those animals locked up, but I didn’t know what to do about it. He couldn’t be reasoned with. Even as a little boy. He had his ideas and he held them."

And in the book’s acknowledgements the author quotes the environmental activist David Buckel and his self-immolation as an act of walking away from Omelas.

And finally how does one interpret the ending of the book and the reappearance of Annie - Annie who argued about male/female dichotomy, read a book on revolutionary self-immolation and wrote an essay about the overthrow of capitalism.

Jesse Ball

The same acknowledgments quote her partner Jesse Ball as “a mysterious weather pattern that has never been directly observed and can only be measured by its aftermath”.

I find it fascinating to see two writers whose work seems to inform and interact with the other’s. Its hard not to reflect (not least for its title) on Ball’s “Silence Once Begun” when reading this novel, or “Census” (where the ways in which people interact with the Census-taker’s Down’s syndrome Son says so much about them). But similarly and given the earlier conception of this novel, its not hard to see how the Festival of Forgiveness informed the jubilee-style Ogia’s Day in “The Diver’s Game” or that the townspeople’s views on Pew (at times considering her an archangel or even second coming, allowing her to witness their shared confessions) has echoes in that book’s Day of the Infanta.

#BLM

The time in which the book is set is unspecified and there is a reference to changing views of morality

We know we haven’t always been fair to everyone. Certainly—no. But we’ve always been fair to people according to what the definition of fair was at the time.

But there are also echoes that whenever the book is set – 2020, 1987, 1963 – some things tragically do not alter. Highly recommended.

My thanks to Granta for an ARC via NetGalley.

There are lots of stories that begin with a stranger arriving in town. It is not often that the stranger turns out to be a stranger to themselves as well as to the community in which they find themselves. But here, our protagonist says on the very first page:

”…though I am having trouble lately with remembering.”

And later goes on to say:

”All I could have told the Reverend, if I could have spoken, was that I was human just as he was human, only missing a few things he seemed to think I needed - a past, a memory of my past, an origin - I had none of that."

And so we meet Pew, named for where they were discovered asleep in a church. Pew, who rarely speaks and seems to represent a kind of void at the heart of this novel. Pew, of indeterminate age, gender and race, whose “unclassifiability” presents a challenge to the community in which they find themselves.

We humans love to classify people.

”But first we need to know these things. Do you understand? These are just how the rules work. I didn’t make them, but I do think it’s best that we follow them, don’t you?”

But Pew remains unresponsive. It must have been quite a challenge to the author here to write a character that can so completely frustrate the outside world’s attempts to categorise them and who lives with almost entirely no memory of their past. And to write from the point of view of that character in a way that doesn’t alienate the reader but rather draws them in. And then, at the same time, give us a view, by the things people say, of the fear that is generated in people by the unknown. The silence emanating from Pew draws the community around them to gradually reveal itself as individuals talk to Pew and find themselves saying, or at least revealing, far more than they intend.

And it’s not really a pretty sight. It’s the week before The Festival and everyone is a bit tense, anyway.

Religion also plays an important part in the novel. This is a very religious community and religious language abounds. But it does not seem anti-God. It seems rather to be anti those who are too certain of things, too inflexible, too sure of their own righteousness.

And I am not going to argue with that.

“A word is put down as a placeholder for something that cannot be communicated, no matter what anyone tries, no matter how many words accumulate, there is always that absence. I stayed silent.”

In Catherine Lacey's fable-like new novel a stranger arrives in a close-knit community, one where religion plays a big part. They are discovered during a Sunday service, where they had been sleeping overnight in a church pew. Where they are from and who they are is a mystery not just to the townspeople but also to themselves, Lacey taking the artistically brave decision to use a first person narrator:

“Really, whatever you’d like to be called, that’s all we’re asking. I didn’t want to be called anything.
...
All I could have told the Reverend, if I could have spoken, was that I was human just as he was human, only missing a few things he seemed to think I needed— a past, a memory of my past, an origin— I had none of that. I felt I wasn’t the only one, that there must have been others, that I was a part of a “we,” only I didn’t know where they were . We were and I was, not entirely alone. Maybe we were all looking for one another without knowing it.”

In the absence of another name, they are given the name Pew and invited to live with the family who first discovered them. They are taken to meet a wide range of the community, in the hope that someone will encourage them to open up. But while these others often project their own situation onto Pew, Pew remains largely silent, only very occasionally speaking and then only briefly, usually to those who are themselves outsiders.

The biggest frustration for the locals is their inability to pin Pew down - even their age (an adolescent or a young adult?), gender or race:

“We ask Pew where they’ve come from—nothing. What he needs—nothing. What happened to him—or her. Quite frankly we still don’t know if Pew is a boy or girl, we don’t know Pew’s age, we don’t know Pew’s real name, or if anyone out there might be missing Pew—and even if we ask any of these things, we get nothing. And there’s not even any agreement about Pew’s heritage, his nationality, her race—everyone’s in disagreement about where Pew might be from and it’s troubling, ain’t it?”

whereas in the community itself, at least on the surface :

“everyone knew everyone and they all belonged to one another. There was a certainty, a clarity, a real joy, that fused them all into one, into one massive entity, the weight of their years all pressed together, thousands of years in the room, all together like that, entwined with one another, no distance between any of them, no loneliness, no solitude— and it was easy to see, just then, how intensely one could want to belong here.”

Although the reader's experience from some of Pew's encounters with individuals might suggest otherwise (encounters which have element of Rachel Cusk's Outline, albeit here we perhaps learn more about the community than about Pew).

But Pew ultimately yearns for a different world:

“I shut my eyes and imagined a life in which only our thoughts and intentions could be seen, where our bodies were not flesh but something else, something that was more than all this skin, this weight. For a few moments I forgot where I was. I finished the glass of milk without realizing it, lost in the idea of a disembodied world, one where ideas could hold other ideas, where thoughts could see other thoughts and death couldn’t end thoughts, where one remained alive by thinking and was not alive if not thinking. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t hold us back the way they do here. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t determine our lives, the lives of others, the ways in which one life could or could not meet the life of another. We would not have to sleep or slam doors or exist in these cells that eat other cells and die anyway, these cells we live in.”

The town is particularly tense due to mysterious disappearances over in the neighbouring county and the approach of an annual, ritualised, Festival taking place at the end of the week. The chapters of the novel are based on days of the week, leading to the Festival itself on the Saturday, giving the novel an ominous tone.

As for what the Festival constitutes, no spoilers here, but it is in any case open to interpretation, although this comment by one of the community gives an interesting slant: “we know we haven’t always been fair to everyone. Certainly— no. But we’ve always been fair to people according to what the definition of fair was at the time.” (see also this Guardian review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/22/pew-by-catherine-lacey-review-a-foreboding-fable)

And there is a very direct nod to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, a quote from which forms the epigraph, as Pew does, towards the novel's end, recover one seeming memory:

“I began to both remember and lose the shape of the years that had led me here. I could remember a low, windowless room. Three paces by two paces. A damp floor. The taste of blood. A child.”

which is a very direct lift from the room in Le Guin's story (a textual cross-over between stories, a dream, a memory from Pew of reading the book, a coincidence?)

The novel is dedicated to Jesse Ball, Lacey's partner, and includes the wonderful acknowledgement “Jesse Ball is a mysterious weather pattern that has never been directly observed and can only be measured by its aftermath.” It certainly shares similarities with his fable-like yet highly political stories, although she doesn't follow his trademark approach of writing a book in a few days and then not revising it, telling an interviewer:

“The first draft took about two months. I read it several months later and found that most of it was bad, so I rewrote it quickly. I repeated this process five or six times between 2016 and 2019, and eventually found that when I had my main character listen to other characters, it made the creation and deletion of dozens of pages much easier. It was as if—oh, I didn’t write that, I just heard someone say it.” (from https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/82342-america-magnified-pw-talks-with-catherine-lacey.html)

indeed Lacey recalled in a recorded conversation between them (https://bombmagazine.org/articles/jesse-ball-catherine-lacey/) that pretty much the first thing she ever said to Ball was “I’ve heard about your methods, and I find them suspicious.”

But if I had an issue with the novel, it is that it did seem to rely on an unfavourable caricature of institutionalised religion, albeit one the author has suggested is rooted in her own upbringing.

Artistically too, as a number of reviewers have noted, it may lean a little too heavily on Le Guin and Shirley Jackson.

Overall though a fascinating novel - 3.5 stars.

I was intrigued by the synopsis of Pew on NetGalley. I was pleased to be given a chance to read and review it. Now I have read it and it's time for my opinion. I honestly don't know were to start. There is so much in this fairly short novel. It's about class, race and gender and seems really topical in our troubled times. It's made me sad and I won't forget it. I recommend everyone read Pew.
Thanks to NetGalley and the author for the opportunity to read this book.

Every so often, a novel comes along which is completely different to what I would normally have tackled, and yet it’s so perfectly formed I can’t imagine having read anything else.

This is one of those, along with Saltwater by Jessica Andrews, which I’m still thinking about, months later.  Pew, by Catherine Lacey, is a mere 224 pages but it packs a lot into those.

Pew is the eponymous main character.  They wander along dark pathways, seeking shelter and sleep but finding none, constantly on the move. Then they wake up in the middle of a church service, asleep on a pew in a church. We don’t find out when, or where this is set but can gather that it’s likely to be a small town in the South of America. It’s likely to be modern day, but that’s based on the conversations and not on the technology or pop culture references, of which there are very few.

The narrative structure follows a week in Pew’s life as they are saved by the community, taken in to the bosom of their families and fed, clothed and watered. Or not. Depending on perspective, and context, and environmental factors, Pew could also be seen as a prisoner in a strange family home, forced into clothing they don’t want to wear and filled with food they don’t want to eat.

This forms one of the themes of the book – are you a saviour if you’re saving someone who doesn’t need to be rescued? Are you a hero for taking someone in and then demanding praise for it? Another theme concerns identity, and the need to identify something, or someone, in order to understand. Pew’s appearance is ambiguous, not clearly defined as black or white, or male or female, child or adult. This causes concern for a lot of people in the town, who insist that Pew identifies themselves in order to continue to be helped by them. It’s such an effective way of laying out the discussion, while you can see all points of view, it renders it faintly ridiculous that nearly a whole town needs to know what genitals this person has before caring for them.  Without a name, they give them one, to match where they were found, in a slightly mocking way which equates them to a cat called Gutter.

Pew doesn’t talk very much at all, and so they find themselves to be the confessional target for lots of the townspeople. All of them, or nearly all of them at least, profess not to be big talkers and then proceed to tell them their biggest shames, their most smallest of secrets. Something about Pew’s silence opens up people, perhaps they can trust them in a way they can’t trust anyone else. Maybe they wonder who Pew will tell their secrets to. It also infuriates others, who believe that Pew’s silence is hiding who they truly are, and they will soon be revealed to be a burglar, sex offender or murderer.

Despite the lack of conversation from Pew, there are plenty of voices in the book as they overhear conversations, listen to discussions on them and what to do, and there is their internal monologue too. Letting the reader in to Pew’s thoughts is a great way of bringing us closer to them, away from the people in the town and on their side, without giving us all of the answers.

There's also an undercurrent of racial tension in the town, as Pew cannot be identified as firmly black or white and so they cannot determine who should look after them - as if that is the pertinent question. This, and the fixation of Pew's gender identity, make me inclined to place the novel as present day.  In other ways though, it could be completely timeless, or set in the 1950s. 

For fans of Rachel Cusk, and Jessica Andrews – recommended! Thanks to Netgalley and and Granta publications, this book is available now.

This is a strangely atmospheric, dreamlike book that manages to be utterly compelling too. Pew is the name given to the main character - a teenager of unknown gender, race or history, who is looked after by a religious community somewhere in the ‘Bible Belt’ of southern US states. Pew very rarely speaks and his/her silence seems to give those around him/her permission to talk so much about themselves that all sorts of fears, joys, prejudices and most intimate secrets are revealed. This short novel is very beautifully written but the ending is not as convincing as the rest of the book - a great pity, as this is writing that reveals so much about inherent judgement and prejudice without ever ‘preaching’ at the reader.’

Catherine Lacey is an extrondiary writer and this her third novel, she manages to capture the power of silence in the most compelling way. Pew is a mysterious figure, gender who is found in a church Pew. Pew is the name given after refusing to speak or reveal anything about their past. They are thrust into the community, who are more than happy to congratulate themselves on their goodwill but soon panic seeps in as they receive no reward. They are seeking answers to the questions they ask, they feel they deserve them. When they are not answered they begin to reveal more about themselves and their community in the hope of some response, the term silence in golden has never been more abpt and is the key theme throughout this novel.

Lacey draws out incredible depth in each character that is brought towards Pew, and it is a rewarding novel in that way. Pew gives nothing and yet manages to get everything out of anyone who comes into contact with her which makes for a compelling read. The novel has a deep underlying tension that unfortunately falls flat in the end but its conclusion can be forgiven for everything that happened before is a superb piece of writing.

Pew is a novel with an interesting premise - a young person of indeterminable race and gender and who is essentially mute appears - on a pew, hence the name they're quickly given - in a church in a small town, presenting the people of the town with a dilemma: how to deal with this person who they're unable to put into the categories we normally use to deal with people across society?

The story was almost parable-esque at times, with the different residents showing their true colours by how they interact with and treat Pew. Yet this never feels trite or too obvious, and Lacey handles the themes of the book well. I also loved the writing style which borders on sparse but fitted the novel perfectly. Recommended!

This is a really intriguing read that manages to seem both timeless and timely in its parallels to contemporary western culture. Pew, named after the place they were found, is our virtually mute protagonist, of indistinguishable gender, race and age, taken in by a Christian community in the American South. The novel takes place over the week leading up to an ominous “festival”. It is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery in this regard (although it is a quieter story to Jackson’s, in many senses of the word). It is a thought-provoking consideration of identity: Who is Pew? Where have they come from? Why are they here? But the questioning reflects more on the God-fearing people Pew encounters along the way. Their need to know and desire for definitive answers presents them as shallow and lacking. The amnesiac Pew is the more enlightened figure, a wordless confidant for the community’s confessions. I wanted to hear more from Pew but perhaps that is the point; Pew is a character projected onto, their own thoughts and feelings marginalised. This is a novel that invites discussion and unpacking. I’ll certainly be seeking out the author’s other writings.

Favourite line/passage. So many wonderfully composed passages, but a standout one for me:

I am only one person, ruined by what I have and have not done.

Many thanks to Granta and Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. #Pew #NetGalley

<i>How much harm did we cause without knowing it? How much harm did we cause when we were certain we were doing such good?</i>

What an interesting and strange book this is. It is definitely an 'arthouse' novel - like a Dogme 95 film (though it would have maybe benefited from a bit more more Dogme 95-style extremity...). Think Shirley Jackson, think "Midsommar", but with an icier, more academic/philosophical vibe.

The novel is narrated in first-person by the titular character Pew. This in itself was a very interesting and risky move (like if “A Luminous Republic” had been narrated by one of the feral children). Basically, Pew is named by the community after where they were found - a church pew. They have no discernible race or gender. They often refuse to speak. This causes the community to be irritated and annoyed.

I read this book as a parable and commentary on many things. A commentary on the desire for the “good” immigrant/refugee. A commentary on the need that people have for labels, especially when it comes to the body. On the insistence that speaking aloud is the only path towards overcoming trauma. On how supposedly community-oriented small town life is actually quite repressive. What it means to actually “help.” The role of religion in U.S. culture (basically, it’s a bit shit). What it would really mean to authentically follow Jesus’ teachings - i.e., something a bit Buddhist - how you would have to give up everything and everyone, and become no one.

It’s all really quite interesting to think about! But my main qualm with the novel is that as a work of fiction... it got a bit repetitive at times. Pew is a blank slate and is “talked” at by different characters, and this formula repeats until the end of the book. There are dark hints about the Shirley Jackson-esque Forgiveness Festival (which serves as the novel’s climax), but it’s not as juicy as a scene as I wanted it to be. I wanted more drama, basically. Ultimately the dialogue is not as distinct and memorable as it is in Rachel Cusk’s <i>Outline</i> series; here, it gets a bit numbing. That might be the point - everyone in this close-knit community thinks and sounds the same - but as a work of fiction, it started to drone a bit for me.

I really, <i>really</i> like the <i>ideas</i> in this novel. I got a lot out of the brief afterword, in which the author mentions her influences (Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Buckel">David Buckel</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit">Derek Parfit</a>). There's definitely several scenes near the end that seems to be explicitly referring to LeGuin's short story (is Pew basically the child from LeGuin's story, years later?).

I really like that this novel exists. I feel like it would lead to really interesting discussions. In a way, I like thinking about it and having read it more than the actual <i>experience</i> of reading it. I DEFINITELY prefer reading this kind of fiction about life under the Trump administration - something weird - as opposed to something more traditional and safe. I have a lot of respect for this author for writing something this risky and I will definitely read more of her work.

My thanks to Granta for an ARC via NetGalley.

In ‘Pew’ by Catherine Lacey, a person wakes up in a church on a Sunday. They appear to have no substantial memories of their past or how they got there. The congregation decides to call that person ‘Pew’. A couple from the congregation invite Pew to stay with them. The novel is divided into chapters which are the days of the week: Sunday to Saturday and we follow Pew as they stay with the congregation in the days leading to the “Forgiveness Festival”.

All the visual markers that would usually make up Pew’s identity are muddled: Pew’s gender presentation is unclear and so is their age and race/ethnicity. Pew does not speak and won’t/can’t answer questions about where they’ve come from and how old they are and what has happened to them.

Pew, just by being Pew, unsettles this small congregation in this small town and what begins as charity turns into something menacing. Pew’s body becomes the focus of people who refuse to accept the fact that Pew cannot be clearly defined visually and Pew offers no explanations.

Pew represents the Uncanny / Das Unheimliche, the one who disturbs through their indeterminancy. Pew destabilises the congregation by not confirming to identity boundaries. The novel also conveys Pew becoming abject, being rejected and even hated. This then shows the problematic nature of the Christian charity which Pew receives from the congregation. It’s a conditional form of charity: Pew is asked to give answers and will only be allowed to stay in someone’s home and be given food if Pew responds to questions, if they allow their body to be examined by a doctor, if they admit to some form of past harm. The congregation effectively tells Pew that if Pew is not able to give answers, then they must give up any form of ownership of their body to the congregation in order to continue receiving charity. Is conditional charity still charity? Can there be charity without mercy? And does Pew even want to stay? Is this a novel about Pew or is this a novel about the members of the congregation? Is a Church congregation a group of people defining itself as a group on the basis of the exclusion of others?

“Everyone—every single one of us—everyone is born broken”, Pew is told at some point. A short passage recounts a biology lesson which mentions the asexuality of dandelions, creating an image of Pew as a dandelion, something fragile and easily scattered. Pew’s non-fixity is also about location: they move through actual geographical places, they wander. Is this an echo of the epic journey in the Old Testament, of wandering through the desert for 40 years? Maybe, but Pew lacks a destination and lacks any kind of purpose, other than mere survival.

What begins as an unwilling quasi-baptism in a church then turns into a confession. Various members of the congregation tell Pew their secrets and confess their sins. In Pew being turned abject, the novel also shows an opposite process taking place: the apotheosis / deification of Pew by a few members of the congregation. Pew is believed to be an archangel (a genderless, race-less, ageless, undefinable being that is nonetheless more-than human) and even “our new jesus”.

The novel poses a lot of questions and presents a lot of ideas. The Freudian Uncanny meets Julia Kristeva’s ‘abject’, meets Judith Butler’s ‘gender trouble’ meets queer theology. Lacey achieves all of that quite deftly and with what I thought was a gentleness towards the novel’s characters. I did feel at times that there was quite a lot of repetition of all the different confessions. The first confession makes you understand that it everyone has secrets to hide but reading about everyone’s secrets made it feel repetitive and the effect of each revelation progressively diminishes. The novel also ends quite abruptly and it leaves too many questions unanswered about the congregation and about Pew. I think that for this reason enjoyed the first part of the novel more than the second part. Overall, this was about a 3.5 star read for me, rounded up to 4.

Catherine Lacey's 'Pew' is reminiscent of several things at once. There are overtones of Shirley Jackson; the simple, declarative, fable-led strangeness of Max Porter's 'Lanny'; the Southern Gothic ambiguity of Flannery O'Connor McCarthy; and, yes, the confederate tension at the heart William Faulkner.
But 'Pew' is also a deeply modern novel, and one imbued with something I can't quite put my finger on. Perhaps it's the idea that the Southern Gothic genre can have something other than terror at its core. A desire to celebrate difference, maybe, or a kind of warmth gifted us by Lacey's imperative to let her characters (excepting Pew) talk. What might any of us say if we had a confidant who didn't answer back?

A sincere thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for providing me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is not my usual genre, I’m more into crime/thriller books and even psychological thrillers too so I am extremely pleased and grateful to them for opening up my mind to something totally different.

Utterly strange and other and fascinating - Pew and the town they find themselves in create a world which creates unanswered questions (and people that want but don’t find answers)