Catherine Lacey is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Compared to Biography of X, I found Pew to be a rather simple and straightforward story that says an awful lot without saying too much. The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars is because while I generally always welcome an ambiguous ending, I'm not entirely sure how much I loved the way this one was written. Regardless, I found this to be a really great piece of speculative fiction with suburb writing that I will likely return to in the future. ( )

very, very good. a meditation on how people desperately need labels, and how lost they become without them. hypocrites, the rot of the heartland, some good people, many ugly people, and our stalwart narrator feeling it all with a visceral intensity and piercing insight. loved it. ( )

wow.. Pew is an easy read on the surface, but harder to figure out the mystery. this book was mystique and odd and eerie and brilliant. i've been sittng on this book for a while and i can't stop thinking about it. who is Pew? where did they come from? did Pew really have no past memory or were they just being silent? why did Pew show up in that town? in that church? Pew was questioned and evaluated by the whole town. people tried art therapy, mental health, questioning, and religious inquiry... they were put through the ringer. reading this book brought up so my thoughts.. greed, love, God are things children know about, but how do they know these things different from adults.
Pew pushed the boundaries of comfortableness with their "thoughts-of-nothingness" “Pew listened to others, but did not listen at the same time”. by the end of the book i was left thinking a lot about the spiritual universe. i found this book to be an opening to a path to understanding and healing ourselves and finding peace. i can’t say i fully comprehended all that Catherine Lacey wrote.. not even sure we are supposed to, but her sentences and reflective dialogue were powerful ( )

This is my second novel by Lacey. I thought it was engaging but not as strong as Biography of X. It has some similar themes (mysterious past, conservative religious society) but also some other intriguing pieces (do humans need to be able to categorize other humans to relate to them). I thought it got the point across but was ultimately weakened significantly by a final fifth or so that is so ambiguous as to be frustrating. I am not a reader who needs things tied with a bow. But this was not enough. ( )

Pew is a great read and a remarkably poignant allegory of the modern world. And I do love omelas very much. A surefire way of creating a good book is starting it with Ursula k le guin. My one critique is that it’s a little too on the nose for me like the story does not exist outside of its use as an allegory, which is fine but not my taste.

Unfortunately didnt finish book in time for book club :-( ( )