"Unsettling, mundane, and funny, Lacey’s fictions sometimes read as if characters let loose from Beckett were wandering through a recognizable, even realist landscape . . . [Pew is] the logical and relentless development of this bold young writer’s previous work . . .Pew is a brave book, in both concept and execution." James Wood, The New Yorker
"Marvelously elusive . . . I have thought about characterizing it as a work of Southern Gothic in the vein of Flannery O’Connor, as a political-religious fable reminiscent of Margaret Atwood, as a Shirley Jackson-esque piece of small-town horror, and even as a sly update on Mark Twain’s great story 'The Mysterious Stranger.' Each comparison seems right from certain angles and insufficient from others. Like its ambiguous title character, the novel resists definition." Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"Catherine Lacey, a fiction wunderkind who writes with dynamite, has recreated herself, and our ideas about what novels can do, yet again." Vulture
"Potent and timely . . . Lacey is a gifted writer, on par with the best of horror writers at ratcheting up tension . . . Lacey makes a strong case against the human desire to size up and categorize the people we meet." Patty Rhule, USA Today
"Told in Pew’s spare, elegiac voice, Lacey’s third novel is an ambitious story of compassion, cruelty, and belonging, as well as a powerful exploration of the dangers posed by white guilt and institutionalized religion." Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"The most impressive feat Lacey has accomplished in her newest novel is the ambitious construction of the narrator . . . a work that evokes the same presumptions and privileges in the reader as it does in its characters — particularly those of the townsfolk . . . For anyone who values literature that tests commonly held standards regarding what a character should be and how they are developed, this is a book not to be missed. Its success at pushing beyond preconceived ideas about a character’s identity and narratorial credence will be discussed among writers for years to come." Ryan Smernoff, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Lacey works at the provocative end of contemporary American fiction, and Pew is her sharpest novel yet: a tale of the quiet savagery of “good” intentions, and the tyranny – and ecstasy – of belonging . . . . There is a fallen-to-Earth quality about Lacey’s amnesiac, androgynous confidante: part space alien, part unwitting, or unwilling, messiah; a kind of ethereal cultural anthropologist." Beejay Silcox, The Times Literary Supplement
"Lacey’s fourth novel is splendid — beautifully written and pleasingly concise, with an eerie atmosphere somehow perfect for times in which, as one character remarks, 'everything is just so strange lately' . . . All this ambiguity might sound exasperating to readers as well. It’s not. . . I can’t over-emphasise how sweetly, swiftly and entertainingly this book proceeds, or how exquisitely the prose is crafted on every page." Lionel Shriver, Financial Times
"Though the broad strokes might seem familiar, at every turn Lacey resists conventional developments . . . What’s most impressive is Lacey’s restraint—like Pew, she remains an observer, withholding judgment without sparing any detail. A fabulist tale with no prescribed moral, Pew has the thrum of a foreshock, setting the reader on edge with the unlikely omens of hospitality and attrition." Danette Chavez, A.V. Club
"This modern fable, written from and for an America consumed by identity politics, illustrates just how deeply embedded the impulse toward othering runs in this country . . . This highly disassociated relation between Pew and their body produces some of the most stirring, beautiful sentences in the novel while chipping away at society’s compulsion to organize itself according to how our bodies look." Connor Goodwin, Seattle Times
"[A] puzzle of a novel . . . Lacey has always been an economical writer, and she is as taut as she’s ever been here . . . These monologues make sections of the book read like Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy blended with the creeping unease of Ari Aster’s horror film Midsommar . . . it is within [Pew's] messier reaches, and its concerns with inequality and prejudice, that its boldest and most brilliant effects are found." Chris Power, The Guardian (Book of the Day)
"It needs authorial guts to write a novel in which details are shrouded, meaning is concealed and little is certain. Step up Catherine Lacey, and welcome. . . . There’s a whiff of Shirley Jackson in the air . . . [Pew is] ultimately intriguing. It keeps you thinking, and you can’t ask for much more than that." John Self, Spectator (London)
"Powerful . . . [a] rich, enigmatic novel." Anthony Cummins, The Observer (London)
"An alarmingly discomfiting, sublimely written novel . . . Pew is a masterpiece of misdirection . . . This is a novel about preconception, moral blindness and the long fingers of guilt." Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman
"Pew is muted and opaque, the prose spare and clean, the story told with the disaffected eye of a documentarian . . . Pew, in focusing on the big issues of the day – race, gender, and immigration – compels us to pause, reflect, and then interrogate our own hard-wired beliefs and prejudices." Ian Mond, Locus
"[A] haunting fable about morality and self-delusion . . . Lacey—spare and elegant as ever—creates a story that feels at the same time mythological and arrestingly like life. Darkly playful; a warning without a moral." Kirkus (starred review)
"An ambitious, powerful fable of identity and belief . . . Lacey’s talent shines in this masterful work, her best yet." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Lacey's quietly provocative novel is brilliantly composed. She shines a light on the complexity of humans and the dangers of judging and categorizing others based on appearance, as Pew’s ambiguity reveals the true nature of her characters." Booklist
“A stranger comes to town, and takes us with them into their estrangement among the denizens of a conservative religious community. 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
“The mercurial and electric Catherine Lacey has now conjured up an of-the-moment fable of trauma and projection – one part Kaspar Hauser, one part James Purdy, and one part Rachel Cusk. The pages shimmer with implication.” Jonathan Lethem, author of The Feral Detective
“I consumed Pew. It is the electric charge we need.” Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
★ 02/10/2020
Lacey (Certain American States) sets an ambitious, powerful fable of identity and belief in the contemporary American South. An unnamed person with no sense of gender or race (“Anything I remember being told about my body contradicts something else I’ve been told. I look at my skin and cannot say what shade it is”) is found sleeping in a church pew by Steven, Hilda, and their three boys. The family decide to house the mute stranger, whom they name Pew. The action, which takes place over one week, mostly consists of Pew’s interactions with the town’s residents, who offer one-sided monologues to Pew about their Christian beliefs and believe Pew is their “new jesus.” Pew’s indeterminate features and the townspeople’s habit of projecting onto Pew lead them to see what they want to see, and here Lacey showcases a keen ear for the lilting, sometimes bombastic music of human speech that reveals more than her speakers intend. Pew, meanwhile, bonds with Nelson, a teenage refugee from a war-torn country whose intelligence his caretakers underestimate. Lacey’s incisive look at the townspeople’s narrow understanding draws a stark contrast with Pew’s mute wishes, imagining a life in which “our bodies wouldn’t determine our lives, or the lives of others.” The action builds toward a mysterious Forgiveness Festival and a memorable climax with disturbing echoes of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” unveiled in a harrowing crescendo of call and response. Lacey’s talent shines in this masterful work, her best yet. (May)
05/01/2020
At the beginning of the week leading up to a small Southern town's yearly high point, a quasi-religious event called the Forgiveness Festival, an individual of indeterminate name, race, age, gender, and biography is found sleeping in the church. Dubbed simply Pew, the stranger is taken in by Hilda and her family, who hope to provide succor and discover the identity and backstory of their guest. The typically mute Pew doesn't cooperate with Hilda's well-meaning attempts to help or with the efforts made by the friends, social workers, and ministers she recruits. Interestingly, those who work with Pew often end up confessing their own sins, fears, and inadequacies to this quiet figure. But as the townsfolk move through the week, their curiosity and good-heartedness begin to turn to fear and suspicion. VERDICT Working with the spiritual and social notions of the stranger and the other, Lacey (The Answers) creates an amorphously Christlike figure who comes to represent whatever people want to see, good or bad. With echoes of some of Shirley Jackson's work, this is a complex, many-faceted fable about religion, hypocrisy, forgiveness, and how society defines social identity. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]—Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA
★ 2020-02-09
A silent stranger of indeterminate origin is discovered sleeping on a church pew in Lacey’s haunting fable about morality and self-delusion.
A nice churchgoing family—Hilda, Steven, and their three boys—in the small-town American South stumbles on someone lying down before services on Sunday and agrees to take the stranger in. “Steven and I decided that you can stay with us as long as it takes,” Hilda tells the stranger, who responds with silence. The stranger is illegible to them—racially ambiguous, of indeterminate gender, unclear age, no obvious nationality—and as an interim solution, the reverend decides they’ll call the stranger Pew, “until you get around to telling us something different.” They are kind, at first, and patient. Their questions as to Pew’s identity are only meant to help, they say—“we really don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, exactly,” and “God loves all his children exactly the same”—but still, they need to know “which one” Pew is, and Pew continues to say nothing. But other people do: Invited by Pew’s silence, they begin to confide in Pew, offering sometimes-chilling windows into their past lives. Pew, publicly silent but an acute observer of societal dynamics, is both the novel's narrator and its center, an outside lens into an insular and unsettling world. Pew’s only peer is Nelson, adopted by one of the church families from “someplace having a war,” a fellow charity case, ill at ease in town. “My whole family was killed in the name of God,” he says, “and now these people want me to sing a hymn like it was all some kind of misunderstanding.” As the week wears on, tensions begin to rise as the community prepares for its annual “Forgiveness Festival,” an ominous cleansing ritual central to the cohesion of the town. “The time right after, everyone’s more peaceful,” Nelson’s mother tells Pew. “Of course right now it’s a little more dangerous for everyone.” Setting her third novel in a placid town built on a foundation of unspeakable violence, Lacey (Certain American States, 2018, etc.)—spare and elegant as ever—creates a story that feels at the same time mythological and arrestingly like life.
Darkly playful; a warning without a moral.