Recent Reads: Pew by Catherine Lacey

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

(Spoiler warning!)

The novel Pew by Catherine Lacey depicts the arrival of a person without a home in a small, unnamed town in the American South. This individual, who required shelter for the night, was found asleep on a church pew during a congregation. They are genderless, racially ambiguous, and unwilling to speak. The family that initially decides to take in this visitor  nicknames them Pew, after the place they were found. It may not be a stretch to assume that the character being named after where they came from represents how people categorize others based on their origins. 

Pew, being racially ambiguous, poses discomfort for some of the townspeople, whose hospitality and self-proclaimed generosity eventually devolve into suspicion, resentment, and a demand that Pew explain their identity. The members of the community ask Pew questions such as “are you a boy or a girl?” and “where are you from?”, highlighting society’s often pervasive need to categorize others based on physical characteristics. At one point Pew is even referred to as  “it”, as if they are somehow less human than those around them because of who they are.

As Pew remains silent, many of the townspeople begin to tell them of their prejudices, pasts, and fears. They treat Pew as a person to “confess” to, as if this can relieve them of the guilt that comes with the harm that many of them have caused. All of this is a prelude to a mysterious event called the “Forgiveness Festival,” during which individuals confess to each other the worst things they have ever done, and end the ceremony by declaring repeatedly, “I forgive you.”

The novel examines humans’ apparent tendency to “other” each other in both subtle and overt ways, posing the question of why some hold an innate disdain or hatred toward a group of people. Beyond the identification of this aspect of the world, the author compels her audience to consider the everyday mechanics of it in a minimalistic and slightly unsettling writing style. Lacey allegorically addresses social categorization, hypocrisy, and “white saviour” narratives, criticizing the age-old phenomenon of oppressors asking for forgiveness and assimilation from the oppressed. The book equally critiques the anthropocentric belief that humans are the most central and important species on Earth, the notion that wishing for universal rights and equality is equivalent to communism, and other sociological ideas. Finally, the novel brings to light the correlation that may exist between institutionalized religion and an aversion to challenging the status quo or critically evaluating complex ideas. 

Below is one of my favourite quotes from the novel: 

“I came to understand that I was not a field. I was not, today, just dirt and seed and grass. A field is a living thing. Fields began and ended. Every plant has a true name that no one had to give them. People were the end of something. The body is already dead.”

This is a thought-provoking yet at times humourous book that some readers may find heavy, as it can get brooding and probes themes surrounding the darker aspects of humanity.