Pew

Starred review from February 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.

Starred review from March 1, 2020
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.

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March 1, 2020
In a religious small town in the American South, a genderless and racially ambiguous figure is found sleeping in a church. A couple takes them home, but the family is quickly unnerved by the figure's indistinct features and silent demeanor. The figure, named Pew by the reverend, is taken to the homes of various townspeople, who individually tell Pew snippets of their lives and their confessions in one-sided conversations. As the townspeople prepare for the Forgiveness Festival, their warm hospitality gives way to suspicion the more they try to figure out what exactly Pew is and where they came from. And the more time Pew spends with these people, the more Pew observes the dark secrets lying underneath the surface of this seemingly unassuming town. Lacey's (The Answers (2017); Certain American States (2018) quietly provocative novel is brilliantly composed. She shines a light on how complicated people are and the dangers of judging others based on appearance, as Pew's ambiguity reveals the true nature of the novel's characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

May 1, 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

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2019

Without obvious gender or racial identity, the mysterious figure found huddled in a church in an unnamed Southern town is dubbed Pew by the conflicted congregation, which passes them from household to household, blurts out fears and past mistakes to them as a sort of silent confessor, and eventually comes to resent them. A fable for our times from a Granta Best of Young American Novelists and NYPL Young Lion finalist.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.