Pew
By (Author) Catherine Lacey
Granta Books
Granta Books
2nd July 2021
6th May 2021
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
813.6
Paperback
224
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 13mm
162g
'I consumed it. It is the electric charge we need' - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
One Sunday morning, a mysterious silent figure is found sleeping in a church in an unnamed American town. The congregants call this amnesiac 'Pew' and seek to uncover who they are: their age; their gender, their race, their intentions. Are they an orphan, or something worse What terrible trouble is Pew running from And why won't they speak
Unable to agree on how to treat a person they cannot categorize - whether to adopt or imprison, help or harm them - this small town is quickly undone by Pew's terrifying silence. What remains is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: our borders and our boundaries, our fears and our woes.
'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 Mars Room
'I consumed it. It is the electric charge we need ' - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels THE ANSWERS and NOBODY IS EVER MISSING, and the collection of stories CERTAIN AMERICAN STATES. She has won a Whiting Award, was a finalist for the NYPL's Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. Her books have been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch & German. She was born in Mississippi and is based in Chicago.