Pew (2020)

Why this one?

I recently read and absolutely loved Lacey’s 2023 novel Biography of X and have been meaning to get around to some of her other work for a while now.

Catherine Lacey (1985- ; active 2014- ) was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. She studied at Columbia University, and was a founding member of a cooperatively owned B&B in Brooklyn, where she lived while writing her first novel, Nobody is Ever Missing (2014). It met with rave reviews and was included in many end of year lists. In 2017 she was included in Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, and in the same year she published her second novel The Answers (currently being adapted for TV by a team including Darren Aronofsky) and the nonfiction The Art of the Affair. A short story collection Certain American States followed in 2018,. Pew (2020) is her third novel and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, a feat recently repeated by Biography of X.

Thoughts, etc.

Pew introduces us to a fairly unique character: nameless, of indeterminate age, gender and race, seemingly mute and amnesiac. They are named Pew by a family who find them sleeping on a church pew (as others have commented: in the manner of naming a pet). Pew's origins and identity are shrouded in mystery, and the Christian Bible Belt community they find themself taken in by is determined to solve that mystery. Alongside this, there is something strange going on in a nearby town, with its own community engaging in protests in the face of a spate of 'disappearances' of young people. In Pew's own town, it's the week of an annual 'festival' which sounds more and more sinister as we learn more about it.

It's a short novel, and there's little more to add (without spoilers) in terms of 'plot'. What we get instead, over the course of the week between Pew being found and the festival, is a series of vignettes in which various locals are introduced to, and try to uncover the mystery of, Pew's origins and identity. In the process of doing so, they tend to reveal something about themselves - often exposing their fears and/or prejudices. Pew narrates, but gives us little insight through that narration. What they do manage to communicate to others is vague and unhelpful - a drawing of birds to an art therapist; the occasional utterance - more often than not a variation on "I don't know"; and precious little else. There are musings from Pew evincing a kind of escapist pleasure in the effacement of identity (a theme that crosses over somewhat with Biography of X) but there's no sense, despite this, that their predicament is in any way deliberate or chosen. Elsewhere we get the sense that Pew has a kind of repulsion for their own body, or physical existence.

Throughout I found myself questioning whether this was truly Pew's story, or whether Pew is just a deliberately blank canvas on which the conservative Christian community draws its own darker side. In either case, those looking for answers of any kind will be sorely disappointed. This is a book that offers only questions, existing in an unease-inducing state of ambiguity about pretty much everything.

Its view of religion, though, is slightly less equivocal: while the community show signs of being caring and welcoming to strangers, this rapidly falls apart when those strangers are unable to conform to a clearly defined identity role; tolerance of difference is not an obvious part of their Christianity. Similarly the festival which, we eventually learn, purports to be about 'forgiveness' actually induces anxiety in residents, seems to propagate a horrifying wave of crime (which is largely unnamed but 'worse for the women', ominously) that can then be 'forgiven' at the festival, has divided the community along racial lines, and is policed by heavily armed guardians. One of the characters who opens up to Pew says that "the only thing I can see that a belief in divinity makes possible in this world is a right toward cruelty - the belief in the afterlife being the real life... not here. People need a sense of righteousness to take things from others... to carry out violence. Divinity gives them that. It creates the reins for cruelty...". In Pew, there is a sense that the violence and cruelty he mentions, while superficially hidden, is never far from erupting into view.

I found this to be a uniquely unnerving and disquieting book, but in a way that felt really compelling. In its atmospherics, it reminded me a little of last year's Booker-shortlisted Study For Obedience (I've also seen both compared to Shirley Jackson) but I found it much more satisfying in terms of reading pleasure and coherence. Its structural mechanism of a day-by-day countdown to a mysterious event added to the tension and kept me constantly on the edge of my seat. If, ultimately, it builds towards something of an anticlimax in terms of there being no real grand revelations, that's perhaps part of the point. Are we, in wanting those answers about Pew's origins and identity, just as guilty as the townspeople of needing to categorise, name, and thereby divide?

Score

9

Another enjoyable read from Lacey. Despite being deliberately obscure and rather austere in its seriousness, I found quite a lot to enjoy in here. It was minimal where Biography of X was wildly dense and expansive, though, so didn’t quite hit the same spectacular heights. I’ll still definitely aim to read more of her work, though.

Next up

Back to some upcoming Netgalley releases I think.