This book has some overwhelmingly beautiful sentences in it, and I wanted to highlight all of them. I really loved the structure of this book, and that we really don’t get any answers to the questions that come up, but that it doesn’t even matter. This book definitely engulfs you in its mystery and I'm just mad I waited this long to read it.

A small town in the south. A community that loves the church and takes pride in doing the right thing and raising their children right. Approach life predictably until something unpredictable happens. When they go to church, they meet a stranger, a young man sleeping on one of the pews. They can't tell what the sex of the person is, how old they are, they don't even agree on the color of their skin. Who is this person, where is this person from? Nobody knows and that person is unwilling or unable to speak. If he does the right thing, a family will take him home. Christian charities are opening their homes and hoping for answers. They call the person Pew, after where they were found. What happens next as Pew passes from family to family is the story. How it is treated, what people are saying and since this is the first time Personal narrative, we learn the thoughts directly from the Pew. All this leads to the Feast of the Forgiveness of the Churches, a truly strange ceremony. I will leave the epilogue, the end, to future readers. Really strange days.Beautifully written, with universal themes, Judging a person by a person's appearance and how someone who cannot be defined can cause discomfort and suspicion. I liked this, a very different kind of story. One that makes the reader think.

What a uniquely strange and singular book; unlike anything I have read before. Catherine Lacey is in a league all her own, and this is a book simply to be experienced.

A youngish person is found sleeping in a small town’s church, and that person has no memory of life to that point. Members of the church and the community can’t decide this person’s age, gender, or race. And this person, the narrator, speaks only a few words throughout the story to a select few people. So the sleeper is christened Pew, for the time being. The family who sat on the same bench with Pew invites the stranger home to stay with them for a bit.

This story covers the span of a week, delineating each day Pew stays in this unknown Southern town. Pew is passed around to various people during the days, brought along to get-togethers. Pew’s presence is often unnerving; others don’t know what to do when they can’t stick any kind of label on this outsider. Above all, however, Pew’s silence leads others to talk, to share things they typically would not.

Pew, for their part, is unsure why others find it so vital to put them in boxes of any kind, their narration indicating a desire to simply be one with parts of nature, with others, to not be singular.

Pew is an unusual novel; it’s short but not a novella or short story. It could be parable or allegory; it’s difficult to define and label or put into a box, much like its “titular” character. It definitely makes mention of race and issues related to it. It seems to deride certain churchgoing types (flat stereotypes, quite honestly) and hypocrisy. The story builds up to a strange festival at the end of the week and the end of the book, which had me wondering for a long while how much it might bear similarities to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” The foreboding of this supposedly beautiful, but also unsettling, annual ritual in the town hangs over the story even as Pew goes from place to place listening to townspeople. Given that expectation I read into the book, I was a bit let down with the end, which I can’t say much else about.

Overall, Pew is a book that’s difficult to explain and that, much like its primary character, will likely reflect (and is sure to be meant to do so) the ideas and experiences of the reader. It’s a bit like Silly Putty: it easily changes shape in the hands of the user; it picks up impressions but then absorbs them and returns to a neutral slate. I’m tempted to put it away for a bit (put that Silly Putty in its storage egg) and take it back out and reread to see where it leads me. This is a story that’s best discussed with others; it would make an excellent book club selection.

Did Pew Come From or Go To Omelas?

This is one of the few books I've read that comes with a homework assignment. But there it is.

The book opens with the last lines from Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". If you know that short story then you will recognize "Pew" as an extended riff on the themes from that story, (and from Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery"). "...Omelas" is from 1973 and "The Lottery" came out in 1948, so those themes have been updated and greatly elaborated upon here with a number of new and contemporary issues, including racial identity, gender ambiguity, sexism, racism, and the like. If you do not "get" the reference to "...Omelas" then the entire book will mostly read like a wonderfully written and extremely random walkabout in the main character's head, with a side of middle class bashing and a fair amount of rather heavy handed social commentary.

I would respectfully suggest that you read the book first, cold, and without cheating by refreshing your memory of Omelas. The book is just past novella length so it won't be a slog. There are many, many wonderful lines, thoughts, bits, scenes, and throwaway observations, so there will be a lot to amuse and delight you even if you don't quite get where the book is coming from or going to. After that reread "...Omelas", (or even just read a good summary; there are plenty on the internet). When you do, "Pew" will snap into focus, all the parts will line up, and you will see what the author was doing.

Whether what the author did was worth the effort or is even novel is a different question and on that opinions vary, although all the various opinions are correct, especially the ones that conflict with each other. I enjoyed this more because of the author's skill and talent as a writer rather than any special perspicacity on her part as a social commentator, but that's probably just me.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Catharine Lacey's novel Pew explores issues of power, race, and class through a Southern Gothic fable. Someone is found sleeping on a church pew one Sunday morning whose ambiguous appearance has the local citizens guessing. The townspeople christen this person "Pew" since that's where s/he appeared. Pew refuses to speak and answer their questions, which leads most of them to project their hopes, fears, and expectations onto them.

Well-written, but felt very contrived at times. I don't, however, really enjoy much Southern Gothic literature, though, so it could just be that it didn't mesh with my tastes.

A strange and troubling book that flirts with various genres while occupying a veiled space of current immediacy. Race and identity, religious fundamentalism, social tolerance swirl around, with gothic undertones. The atmosphere, ultimately, seems more persuasive than the conclusion nevertheless this is deft, thoughtful, intriguing work from an impressive writer.

When a young person is found in the pew of a church, they are invited to live with one of the church families. But when Pew refuse to say more about their past--and their sex--the parishioners take it upon themselves to figure out "what to do." This book is a unique, haunting, and timely tale about conformity, labels, prejudice, and forgiveness.

It’s taken me awhile to finally review this fantastic, unique read. I usually stick a synopsis in my reviews but I’m going to skip it here. Pew is, in many ways, a book about what you don’t know. Even reading the synopsis (which for me was exciting enough to break my “No more Net Galley requests until I get caught up!” vow. Everyone else I knew who had read the book pre-release seemed to have read it because they were already Catherine Lacey fans. I’d never read her before but can’t wait to read more!). Anyway, this book hooked me and may forever have a piece of me as I continue to turn it over in my head.

I’ve never read anything like it and I think this a book where each individual reader will bring their own meaning and connections to it. I’ve loved discussing it and each time I find another friend has read it, I ask to talk about it. I’ve found it interesting just to catch that some people end up calling Pew “he” or “she”. I don’t know that I ever settled on a gender for Pew or felt that mattered but then that too says something about me, right?

That’s the thing. One person I spoke to mentioned not wanting to bring anything into the book, as if there was some singular intended meaning by the author and frankly, I’m not sure that’s possible. We all bring a lot to every book we read. What’s so unique and special about this book is how much it’s gotten me thinking about that. Pew is the ultimate outsider, identity-less. We have to bring ourselves in and it seems to me that it’s a vehicle through which we connect our own “outsider” parts, the marginalized or just misunderstood parts of ourselves with Pew. I certainly did. For me, as a Jew living in a country where the dominant culture, even secularly, is incredibly Christian-centric, I couldn’t help but think about all the ways it’s like to be a religious and cultural outsider, for me as a Jew. There’s gender and sexual identity issues here which was part of the draw but they weren’t so much my focus, even as a queer reader. Similarly, another reviewer I admire who is a queer Black male, didn’t mention much about sexuality or gender in his review either but he definitely hooked into the racial underpinnings. And certainly ALL of these issues and then some are here in the book. But what stands out and how seems to deeply reflect who each reader is and their own lives experiences.

I also found it absolutely fascinating to see the different ways the townspeople respond to Pew and what they think they see in them. From a Spanish speaking maid who assumes Pew also speaks Spanish, to a misguided family trying to force Pew to bond with the Syrian refugee they adopted, and all the ways so many people see their own troubles in Pew, in so many ways Pew is a mirror to this community, to all our secrets and inner pains and also our prejudices and assumptions. Of course we readers will bring our own meanings in just as those in the book did!

If there was ever one book I’d recommend to absolutely everybody, it’s this one. I feel like even if you don’t love it, it’s an experience all it’s own and worthwhile for that as much as anything. This is a book that will make you think & then rethink. Personally I loved all of that but I also want to be clear that I deeply loved the story itself and the writing. I was not totally thrilled by the ending and maybe wanted a little more and still I can’t really complain! Pew really stretched and changed the limits or bounds in which I perceive literature. It changed what reading literary fiction could be for me. I think this would be a phenomenal book club pick or buddy read. Put this one on your TBR!

When a young person is found in the pew of a church, they are invited to live with one of the church families. But when you refuse to be labeled by sex, the parishioners will tell you that you are loved by God, but you need a label. Pew remains silent, and when the subject of race is brought up along with gender its pointed out that they might be better off in the black section of town, since Pew’s color is much darker than the family with whom they are staying Things don’t get much better. I didn’t come from the south, but I came from a small conservative town, in which help and salvation was available to those that conformed to norms, and this story had the feel of reality. The most important aspects of the story seem to be the reactions of people to Pew’s not responding to them.

One Sunday morning in a small Southern town, a church congregation finds a stranger asleep on a pew. This story, told from the perspective of this silent stranger, is an exploration of our desire to categorize and compartmentalize.

Our main character, named Pew by the townsfolk, is enigmatic in every way. They are ageless, racially ambiguous and without discernible gender. Neither does Pew have the answers, as they have no recollection of their past. The townsfolk go from well-meaning, if insensitive, to menacing as their attempts to classify Pew in a way they find meaningful prove fruitless in the face of Pew's complete apathy. Pew is a scathing commentary on our need to label, our tendency to "other," our (self-)righteousness and our flimsy moralities.

Pew is a true objective outsider being without category or preconception due to their memory loss. Pew serves as a blank canvas on which the townsfolk paint their judgements and prejudices, and in their silence, Pew becomes a sound board for the townfolks' unfiltered thoughts to be spoken aloud.

I've seen this compared to The Twilight Zone and I think that's a fantastic comparison. I would also compare it to The Stepford Wives, where something sinister is lurking behind the beautiful, "all American," small-town facade. This is such a smart and thoughtful read. The book serves as a cracked mirror of sorts, into which we can take an unfiltered look at an America at once slightly "off" and yet wholly our own. Every description feels purposeful and not a word out of place. The author really made use of its limited page count.

I can't not mention the printing job. We're only halfway through the year but I'm certain this is the best cover of 2020. Congratulations to Catherine Lacey and FSG on a beautiful book inside and out!

Lacey’s third novel is a mysterious fable about a stranger showing up in a Southern town in the week before an annual ritual. Pew’s narrator, homeless, mute and amnesiac, wakes up one Sunday in the middle of a church service, observing everything like an alien anthropologist. The stranger’s gender, race, and age are entirely unclear, so the Reverend suggests the name “Pew”. The drama over deciphering Pew’s identity plays out against the preparations for the enigmatic Forgiveness Festival and increasing unrest over racially motivated disappearances. Troubling but strangely compelling; recommended to fans of Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor.

Full review posted at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr261632

The author wrote a story that focused on how we try to categorize people by their gender, race, class, or economic status in order to make ourselves feel better. The character found asleep in a pew doesn't have a way to identify them by any of these, as they are gender-less and refuses to speak. The author explored the complexity of having someone appear that doesn't neatly fit into a pre-conceived category. It was a really thought-provoking read.

The residents of this town ask a question that is all too familiar these days: What are you? Man or Woman? Black or White? Who are your people? Where do you come from? All of the questions are unanswerable. Pew can’t say. She/he/they only know that churches are a safe place to sleep, and when they are found asleep in a pew in an unfamiliar town, they are taken in by a family who feeds them, clothes them, and allows them to stay. But the family’s inability to label and categorize Pew becomes too much of a burden for them and ultimately for the community, and Pew joins the few who embrace their otherness on the edges of the society.

Pew was tightly written and thought-provoking.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I went into this book fully expecting to love it, but it did not completely work for me. While I loved the premise and overall creepy and mysterious tone of the story, I found the plot to be repetitive and unfulfilling, yet that appears to be a point of the novel. I enjoyed this as a thought-experiment on identity, and there are brilliant quotes throughout. However, I wanted more from the plot. I think I will be in the minority on this one, as I have seen numerous rave reviews. I would like to read more of Lacey’s work as I did enjoy her writing.

This weird little book is going to on many year end lists - but....maybe not mine? It's GOOD but....I was kind of bored. I didn't love it.

A small, religious town. A stranger is found sleeping in the church - this person refuses to speak and is no definable race or gender.

The story follows the week prior to the town's "Forgiveness Festival' - and Pew, the person who was sleeping in the church, becomes the town's....confessional. Everyone spills secrets to Pew.

This novel is fantastic but leans heavily into some classic literature (The Lottery) so the originality is somewhat lacking. Still, it's a nice change of pace from the domestic thrillers I've been reading.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

"The only reason I've gone to a church was to sleep...a church is a structure with walls ...a roof...pretty windows...you can't see outside...but...it can keep the outside far from you...I woke up on a pew, sleeping on my side, knees bent". Discovered by Hilda and Steven Bonner, they decided to host "Pew", a nameless person of indeterminate gender, race, and age. Members of this small insular, God fearing community were expected to be kind and compassionate. Pew thinks, "I had known hunger so well and for so long...but now faced with all this, I could hardly eat...I wished I could have reached back and given one [of the meals to myself in]... those days of hunger in the past".

Compassion turned to frustration and distrust. When asked,"did God make you a boy or girl?" No response. "...if I could have spoken...been loosened from the grip of memory...a past, a memory of my past, an origin...what a freedom that was, and what a burden that was..." Approached by community members trying to engage him/her in conversation, Pew's silence was deafening.

In first person narration, Pew highlights his role as confessor, being non-conversational, possibly by choice, allows the speaker to escape judgement. Take Mrs. Gladstone. "Her face...'peace and terror tangled together'...", as she tells Pew about her husband's deathbed confession. A newer member of the community, Roger asks, "[is} remaining silent...having a positive effect or a negative one on your life?" Over the course of a week, some churchgoers feel Pew was sent there for a reason, others find his presence ominous. Saturday will be the yearly "Forgiveness Festival", a ritual embraced by many. Pew needs to be prepared for the upcoming day.

"Pew" by Catherine Leary uses the ruminations of Pew to provide commentary on the absurdity of humans. "[People] hear what they want...everyone knew everyone and they all belonged to one another. There was a certainty, a clarity...". Pew defied definition. "...we know we haven't always been fair to everyone...But we've always been fair to people according to what the definition of fair was at the time". This short, powerful tome is unsettling. "Everywhere you turn, people are hurt...All this bitterness. everyone wants to be the one who's right". A novel for our times!

Thank you Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on July 21, 2020

The narrator of Pew is a boy or a girl of uncertain race or nationality, somewhere on the border of being a child or an adult, male or female, brown or white. The narrator has learned that church pews provide a place to sleep that is sheltered from the elements and peaceful when no service is being held. A pastor decides to call the narrator Pew after the congregation finds the stranger sleeping on a pew during a service. The couple who usually occupy that pew decide it is their Christian duty to bring the stranger home. They soon become uncomfortable and even a bit fearful because Pew will not answer their questions about just who or what Pew is.

Pew understands English but rarely speaks. He privately engages with a refugee child named Nelson who meets Pew at another home where Pew is taken for meetings with a therapist. Nelson tells Pew that his “whole family was killed in the name of God and now these people want me to sing a hymn like it was some kind of misunderstanding. Must have been some other guy.” Nelson notes that Pew’s skin sometimes seems lighter and sometimes darker. One of the community leaders notes that he’s never seen a person who looks quite like Pew, presumably because it is so hard to pin down what Pew looks like. Gazing down at “this body” in private, Pew wonders: “Did everyone feel this vacillating, animal loneliness after removing clothes? How could I still be this thing, answering to its endless needs and betrayals?”

The decision to make Pew an indefinite person, someone who defies labels, is a stroke of genius that allows Catherine Lacey to explore the nature of identity and how important identity is to people who don’t know how to react to someone until that person has been defined. Few of the characters can accept that Pew is just a person. They want Pew to be a male or female person or a gay or straight person or a sexually traumatized person or a black or white or foreign or American person. The need to label Pew before deciding how (or whether) to interact with Pew is a theme that permeates the story. The ability to “identify each other,” in the words of a community leader, is what makes us “civilized.” Another community member worries about allowing Pew to interact with the community’s teens (despite Pew’s lack of inclination to do so) without knowing if Pew is “this way or that.”

The Reverend is quite insistent on knowing whether Pew is biologically a boy or girl (you are what God made you, the Reverend insists, you don’t get to decide) but he doesn’t want to find out the hard way. He insists that all people are entitled to “the same kind of respect,” regardless of gender beliefs or national origin, but Pew wonders how many kinds of respect exist. When Pew remains silent rather than answering questions, most of the community views him with even greater suspicion on the theory that someone who doesn’t speak must have something to hide. Pew, in fact, has nothing to hide but nothing to share. Pew has no memory of parents or home or belonging. Pew’s memories are primal. Pew remembers hunger. Pew remembers the terror of being a child “so small that anyone could just pick you up and take you anywhere at any time,” a terror that makes Pew feel “it’s a wonder there are people at all.”

While the community claims a religious motivation to help Pew (“the whole congregation is concerned, but we know God sent you to us for a reason”), it is clear they want to know how to classify Pew so they can send this stranger to a place where s/he might be “more comfortable” — i.e., somewhere that isn’t here, a place where they won’t be reminded that Pew exists. They claim to want what is best for Pew while reserving the right to decide for themselves what is best for Pew, a decision that will clearly be driven by whatever they feel is best for their own lives.

A religious festival is approaching that fills everyone with dread. The festival was originally seen as a way to reconcile the white community with the segregated black community, although the black community no longer participates. The concept of wearing masks to confess sins at a festival is sufficiently intriguing to warrant a novel of its own, but it is just one of several background elements that create a vague sense of unease that permeates the novel. A nurse at a clinic where Pew refuses to undress is disturbed by some people who recently appeared. Some sort of unrest in a neighboring county is dominating the news. Characters speak of living in a time of evilness before they turn off the news and change the topic, avoiding any substantive discussion of the evil that surrounds and threatens to invade their community. All of this unrest is deliberately undefined, a sort of background noise that heightens the reader’s sense of anxiety as the story moves forward.

The novel contains stories within stories. A (presumably) gay character talks to Pew about how the community isn’t so bad because “no one acts ugly to me. Not to my face.” The character wants Pew to know that being different is tolerated, if not accepted, by the community. Another character talks to Pew about the quiet grief he endures regarding his daughter’s decision to renounce science and equality to marry into the church: “what about when you lose someone who is still alive? When you lose track of the person you know within a person they’ve become — what kind of grief is that?” A woman named Tammy remembers a Latvian woman who was kind to her when she ran away from home at 17, an immigrant who had to make a new life among strangers, a woman with whom Tammy instantly bonded because they both felt misplaced, a sensation that has gripped Tammy since childhood, when she felt that her existence was an accident. Tammy and her husband later tell a tragic story about ill-fated peacocks, ending with the moral: “There’s all sorts of things a person can’t know until it’s too late.”

There is so much stuffed into this relatively short novel that it might take two or three readings to unpack it all. I can imagine professors using it as a teaching tool, not just in literature classes but in philosophy and a variety of social sciences. From a casual reader’s standpoint, the story is beautifully told, raising universal questions that are particularly timely given the worldwide rise of nationalism and white supremacy and intolerance of nontraditional gender identities. Pew is provocative in its multi-faceted portrayal of people who feel like outcasts because they do not easily fit within the narrow boundaries that a community is prepared to accept, no matter how much the community might claim to treat everyone with respect. Some readers might dislike Pew for its ambiguity, but the importance of feeling okay with ambiguity is the novel’s point. I’ve never read a novel that makes the point quite so effectively.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I'm going to be the odd one out on this. Narrated by an ambiguous in every way individual, it's a sort of fable about how a church community reacts to a stranger. I was grabbed by the premise, especially the idea that various members would confess to Pew but it didn't carry through for me. The character I found most interesting was Nelson, a refugee. There's a creepy ceremony to wrap things up. I know others have made much of this but it just wasn't for me. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

PEW is a novel which resists categorization--much as its central figure does. Thought-provoking, ambitious, fierce and sometimes unfocused, this is a read which challenges the reader with provocative questions...even as it leaves some of those questions unanswered. A perfect read for book group discussions.