Hi everyone! I hope you are enjoying the lovely warm weather. Something I should mention about my literary preferences is that I love weird/surreal books. I realize that certain books I read may not be for everyone, which is fine. However, I love books with plots that use strange and bizarre elements. I also love going into books with as little information as possible, which makes reading all the more interesting. With all of that being said, I am going to talk to you about Pew.

Content Warning: Discussions of Homophobia, Discussions of Racism, Discussions and Depictions of Violence, Religious Trauma

A stranger is found asleep on the pew of a church in a nameless town in the American South. The locals don’t know what to make of the stranger. No one can even tell the stranger’s gender, ethnicity, or age. They take to calling them Pew and Pew becomes a fixture in the community. Pew also chooses not to talk. As Pew lives with different families over the week, they begin to learn about the deep secrets hidden amongst the locals. Pew’s arrival also happens to coincide with the Forgiveness Festival. As the day of the festival gets closer, the town becomes more wary of their arrival and suspicions grow into paranoia. In the process of finding out about Pew’s identity, the townspeople must face even larger, more uncomfortable truths about their lives.

This book was an interesting mixture of surrealist and Southern Gothic literature. Catherine Lacey manages to take the seemingly ordinary circumstances that Pew experiences and turns them into something both profound and even sinister at times. I loved the use of ambiguity in the novel as there are multiple mysteries at play but it is unclear whether the answers are there or if they would even be satisfying. This book wasn’t necessarily a mystery or horror novel but it did have many impactful and shocking moments. Pew is a short but dark novel with plenty of complex characters and a foreboding atmosphere.