Pew

A Novel

By: Catherine Lacey

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

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.

©2020 Catherine Lacey (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"Narrator Bahni Turpin gives a tour-de-force performance in this strange allegory featuring a nondescript person found sleeping on a church pew in a small, unnamed Southern town.… Turpin's extraordinary range includes everyone from small children to older men and women. In one scene involving the mysterious annual Forgiveness Festival, Turpin switches age and gender with the ease of water slipping through one's fingers. PEW is a strange ride, but trust Turpin to steer the ship." --AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner

"[Bahni] Turpin narrates with a newscaster-like calm in the first person thoughts of the titular character - a mysterious child, somewhat ambiguous in gender and race.… A provocative meditation on the duplicity of appearances, strongly voiced." --Booklist, starred review

What. Was. That?!

Pew tells you a lot about yourself. Does Pew tell you about themselves? Well, you have to listen.

Masterpiece

I think that it was a masterpiece of postmodern fiction. I think that it has not found its audience yet. I passionately loved this book and keep thinking about it a lot.

Strange and captivating

A very unique story that was at times infuriating and then beautiful, frustrating and then insightful. Exquisite narration as always from Bahni Turpin.

Originality, Calm, soothing narration

Enjoyed the different perspectives of the book. The slow, calm narrative. Very different original storyline.

Not What I Hoped For...

This book just wasn't great. It was reviewed as almost heartwarming and soul changing but I, unfortunately, wasn't moved at all. Almost bored. I was really looking forward to this, too.

interesting

the book brings forth some interesting thoughts. it executes them well in some ways and poorly in others. the narration of this audio book makes the story engaging.

would be great...

for book club discussion. I enjoyed the story. wish I could talk about its meaning with someone.

Good premise, poor execution

The story could have gone in many directions and in the end leaves you hanging. Pew, a person who was found in a church pew that was used as shelter is adopted by the family that finds Pew. The entire books goes without you knowing any concrete facts about Pew. Pew is a gender neutral character, which bothers a lot of the other characters. Pew doesn't remember where they are from, where they are going, or where they have been.

There is a lot in the story to like, such as how people treat others, not only those they know, but those they believe they know and those they do not know at all.

Unfortunately the book spends a lot of time building up the festival event, only to fall flat when the event arrives.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I JUST LISTENED Too

FOR THE LIFE IF ME I DONT KNOW WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT. THE PERFORMANCE was awesome but I still don’t get what it was about. AND I LISTENED TIL THE END. I love Bahni Turpin but I think I want my credit back. I’m scratching my head on this one.

Calm and Captivating

I'm not sure what to make of this book. I don't have the answers but I know I will be thinking about it for some time to come. It's because of this that I think I enjoyed the book. I still have so many questions but isn't that what a good story should do? The narration is excellent.