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    Pew: A Novel
    Pew: A Novel
    Pew: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Pew: A Novel

    Written by Catherine Lacey

    Narrated by Bahni Turpin

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    2021 Audie Award Nominee for Best Literary Fiction & Classics Audiobook

    Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. One of Publishers Weekly's Best Fiction Books of 2020. One of Amazon's 100 Best Books of 2020.

    “The people of this community are stifling, and generous, cruel, earnest, needy, overconfident, fragile and repressive, which is to say that they are brilliantly rendered by their wise maker, Catherine Lacey.” --Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers

    A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy

    In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew.

    As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are―a devil or an angel or something else entirely―is dwarfed by even larger truths.

    Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 21, 2020
    ISBN9781799767640
    Author

    Catherine Lacey

    Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew, and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, the Brooklyn Library Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has been a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a Lambda Literary Award, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.

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    Reviews for Pew

    4/5

    97 ratings13 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Very thought provoking story and excellent narration. I will be looking for other books by this author.
    • 3/5
      This was a miss for me. I was very intrigued by the mystery surrounding the plot of this novel and had seen many good reviews of it around the web so I was eager to give it a read and thought it would be a story that would lead to some crazy events or something. What I was presented with was a story about a small community thrown into confusion by the appearance of a mystery guest who progressively got more uneasy about their new guest, but that ultimately didn't really go anywhere. The slow-burning tension did build throughout the novel and seemed to be building to some big, cult-like ceremony that sounded like trouble, but ultimately it fizzled out into nothing. Kind of like a balloon that was being aired up but sprung a leak and slowly expelled all of it's contents and deflated.

      The origin of the mysterious Pew was never revealed and I really think this story could have benefited from a longer "run time" to explore that more and could have really explored quite a few different ideas.

      Ultimately, not a strong entry for me. The writing was good, I will give the author credit on that (and the audiobook narrator was great!) but from a story perspective, this just wasn't it for me.
    • 2/5
      In a small town in the American South, a young person is found sleeping on a church pew. A couple takes the youth home and offers a place to stay. When they ask questions, they are met with silence, so they decide to call the youth “Pew.” The town is a (so-called) Christian community that holds a (fictitious) “Forgiveness Festival” each year (more like a cult), and Pew has arrived during the week leading up to it. This is an (intentionally) uncomfortable book. It focuses on the townspeople’s need to label Pew in terms of race, gender, and place of origin. The actions taken by the community are more selfish than kind. Pew is the narrator but tells the reader very little, keeping everything vague and distant. I appreciate the message but found it difficult to feel engaged. The style and structure just did not work well for me.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      A brilliantly creepy build-up that covers a lot of interesting ground before ultimately fizzling out in a rather underwhelming fashion. Like reading Nope
    • 3/5
      In Catherine Lacey’s though-provoking novel, Pew, a stranger appears out of nowhere in a small town in the American South, discovered asleep in a church by the congregation on Sunday morning. The townspeople are intrigued and mystified by this new presence, but also disturbed because the stranger does not speak, is androgynous and racially ambiguous in appearance, and, though youthful, is of indeterminate age. The Reverend decides that the stranger can go by the name Pew, “Until you get around to telling us something different,” and a young couple, Steven and Hilda, agree to take Pew into their home. The story is narrated by Pew, who seems just as bewildered by the circumstances of his/her arrival in the town as the residents are, and the action takes place in the fraught week leading up to the Forgiveness Festival, a sacred ritual of great and solemn consequence for the town’s many believers. Lacey’s intent here seems to be to illustrate how human behaviours and valuations are influenced by assumptions we make about one another based on physical appearance and personal data such as name, age, gender, place of origin, religious affiliation, etc. Pew stirs up confusion, frustration, unease, even hostility among the townsfolk because in his/her case none of these customary designations are known. Pew’s silent, watchful presence remains a disturbing mystery from his/her first appearance in the church to his/her participation in the Forgiveness Festival at the novel’s ambiguous conclusion. But it’s not as if the reader knows more than anyone else: though Pew narrates, he/she shares no memories of a previous life: Pew seems to have sprung fully formed out of the earth. Lacey’s narrative builds tension as Pew placidly observes the people around him/her struggling to fill the information void he/she creates with his/her withholding silence, trying to figure out how to behave toward him/her. The novel certainly raises fascinating questions about prejudice, societal inflexibility, and the compulsion to categorize people in order to deal with them whether or not those categories are appropriate or assigned fairly. But the narrative has a quality of deliberate vagueness that holds it somewhat aloof, preventing the reader from forging a meaningful connection with the characters and becoming emotionally immersed in their story. At the same time, Lacey’s prose is cool, limpid and filled with quietly memorable and insightful observations about human nature. Pew is a powerfully enigmatic work of fiction, one that—like its main character—holds its secrets close. We finish it with more questions than answers. But ambiguity is clearly fundamental to the effect Lacey is seeking to create.
    • 5/5
      A mysterious fable of sin & forgiveness, forgiveness v. forgetting, universality, suspicion, acceptance, fear of differences. A person of illusive gender, age, voice, race identity is found sleeping on a church pew, and is so named, Pew. She has no memory and is present as an observer of human hypocrisy. A fascinating, powerful piece of fiction! Incredibly thought provoking!
    • 3/5
      This book is more about the residents of the town that it is about the main character, Pew. To me, it was Pew's silence that aggravated the townspeople more than its ambiguous nature. I think that's what kept me reading. What confounded me was the big buildup to the Forgiveness Festival. The book is memorable, in a way, but I forgot how the story ended about 3 minutes after I finished reading. ???
    • 4/5
      Have you ever found yourself just listening to someone and they open up and tell you things that under regular circumstances, they would never say? That's basically what happens to Pew. Since Pew doesn't speak, the strangers he meets tell stories about themselves and their families that they've never told before. It's a novel that shows the side of people that they never show. The novel explores racism, gender issues, as well as labels. Seeing it through Pew's eyes is what makes this novel feel like a fable. Pew is an observer of a community. That's what pulled me in. The ending is definitely obscure which makes this a novel that either people will love or hate. Either way, readers will be thinking about Pew long after they finish reading.
    • 4/5
      This mysteriously unsettling novel evoked Carson McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers, and Shirley Jackson's The Lottery for me. When a mute young teenager of unknown gender and ethnicity is found sleeping on a church pew in a small Southern Bible Belt town, they are named “Pew” and taken in by an uneasy local family and introduced to neighbors in the hope that someone can get Pew to speak. Pew speaks but two words through the novel and provides only sketchy glimpses into their origin, with no explanation of why or how they ended up in the tiny community. What Pew does is to cause others to speak way more than they should, to fill in Pew's utter silence and to honor their non-judgmental mien. Most people meeting Pew in this small and insular religious hamlet become angry and frustrated by their inability to categorize or to understand this stranger in their midst. In the meantime, frightening disappearances are occurring in a neighboring county on the cusp of the annual local “Forgiveness Festival”, bringing the plot to a confusing conclusion.
    • 5/5
      Imagine wandering without knowing anything about oneself, except that you exist. Where did you come from? Where you going anywhere? Are you even male, female, something else? How old are you? None of these are things that matter. What does matter is finding a place to rest, maybe even sleep.Churches are good for that. And when the protagonist of Pew by Catherine Lacey finds a church in which to sleep, everyone in the strange little town in which it is located is oddly invested in knowing more. They name their newly found person Pew for being found sleeping on one. The family that takes Pew in constantly cajoles, entreats and begs Pew to reveal more. Every time one of them tries to find out more, they show their judgment even as they deny being judgmental. Just existing and resisting only by being practically non-responsive riles up doctors and church folk.The church folk are the ones who control the small town. It's nearly that time of year, when the annual Forgiveness Festival is held. Emotions are ramping up. The mood is ominous, especially for something that is supposed to be healing. And only the white people take part; the Black side of town stays away. At the same time, the news is filled with people disappearing from a nearby town.The novel begins with an epigraph of Ursula K Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas, and has overtones of other works, including Kafka, The Giver by Lois Shields and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. The plot and the philosophical questions blend seamlessly. It is tempting both to turn the pages as quickly as possible to see what is happening, and to stop and mull over the existential questions and noticings of a stripped down character that remains a complex being.Who are we, as just ourselves? As humanity? What are we like? What are the things that make a difference? Are they physical? Mental? A part of our souls? In musings both profound and poetical, Pew and the people in this community open up myriad ways of looking at the world and ourselves. To do this with such a light touch is a remarkable accomplishment. Pew is a book worth reading more than once.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      A town has a feeling, I remembered someone telling me long ago, because certain kinds of thought are contagious.~ from Pew by Catherine LaceyI grew up in the sprawling suburbs of Detroit and lived in and around Philadelphia as a young adult. My first time in a small city of under 8,000 left me struggling. A woman told me that everyone needed to fit into a box, and no one knew what box to put me in. When I took up quilting, people relaxed. Quilters they knew. I finally fit into a box.Nothing can be more closed than a faith community. The best are open and affirmative. The worst sort people reject outsiders who challenge their values. Been there, too. Are you with us or against us? And if you don't join them, you become the outsider, an enemy.Some humans are comfortable with ambiguity, but most want to parse the world into black and white, good and bad, male and female, us and them, liberal and conservative.Catherine Lacey's Pew introduces us to a character with no past, no name, no identity.One Sunday morning a worshipping congregation in a small town finds a being sleeping on a pew. Out of Christian charity, a family takes the foundling home. They name the being Pew.The foundling has no identifying characteristics and is mute in response to people's questions.Clothing is offered to see if Pew chooses male or female attire. The pastor tries to learn Pew's age; there are rules about how things work based on age. A social worker and a physician are brought in to discover if Pew has suffered physical or mental abuse. Pew does not respond, will not disrobe, will not speak. Pew does not know the answers to the questions being asked.Christian charity turns to self-protection, discomfort, and even fear.This community is separate from the world and has their own ritual of forgiveness. Pew has appeared a few days before the festival. It unnerves the community.There is a Shirley Jackson feel to the novel, The Lottery coming to mind. The small town, the closed society, the ritual of the scapegoat are in this novel.Pew's voice takes us into some deep territory, showing what it is like to be on the receiving end of social pressure that seeks to categorize people---put them into a box.Can't we just be and let be? Why do we have to 'fix' the things we don't understand? Must our bodily being determine our place in the human community?Pew sometimes catches a visual memory, almost can articulate a past. But words fail, they are misunderstood, and eventually forgotten. Some things are incommunicable.Members of the community project identities onto Pew, seeing what they want to see.A woman tells Pew about her son faith journey. The son determined that to truly follow the teachings of Jesus one had to give up all attachments in the world. The son gradually let go of his identity, becoming one with all creation. Her son's mystical journey of ego death has shattered his mother and she hoped to discover Pew was her lost son. Pew is shuttled from the white community to the black side of town. An old African American woman sees the 'new jesus' in Pew.People tell Pew their stories, revealing sorrows and horrible acts they would not confess to a community member.There is a lot going on in this novel, and I can't whittle it down to one idea. Perhaps readers will all see their own story in the tale, project what they want to find. I will be ruminating on this one for a long while.I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
    • 4/5
      A small Southern town. A church loving community that prides itself on doing the right thing, raising their children the right way. Going about their lives in a predictable fashion, until something unpredictable happens. Attending church, they are confronted by a stranger, a young person sleeping in one of the pews. They can't tell what sex the person is, his old he is, they even disagree on his color. Who is it, where did this person come from? No one knows and this person won't or can't speak. Doing the right thing, a family takes him home. Christian charity, opening their house, and hoping they can get some answers. They name the person Pew, after the place where he/she was found.What happens after this as Pew goes from family to family, is the story. How he is treated, what people say and since this is a firstPerson narration, we learn thoughts directly from Pew.All this leads up to the Churches forgivness festival, a strange ceremony indeed. The denoument, the ending I will leave up to future readers. Strange days indeed.Beautifully written, with universal themes, Judging a person by the way one looks, and how someone that cannot be defined can cause discomfort and suspicion. I liked this, a very different type of story. One that makes the reader think.ARC from Edelweiss.