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A review by decathelox
Pew by Catherine Lacey
4.0
Sometimes our wounds just need to be spoken aloud and listened to. Similar in style to Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy, this series of (mostly) one-sided conversations illuminate the ethos and agonies of a nameless conservative Southern town. I found the ending, which fascinatingly dissolves, to be a bit too abstract for me, but overall this novel was a really interesting look into forgiveness and humanity, written beautifully. What do we do when faced with the Other?
Some quotes I particularly liked:
"Since I had woken up on that pew, the meals had been endless and I wished I could have reached back and given one of them to those days of hunger in the past, or that I could have moved this plate to a place—there must have been such a place—where someone else was hungry."
"When you lose track of the person you know within a person they've become—what kind of grief is that?"
"We listened to the organ wail. Some time passed this way. It began to seem possible that a person might have pains and thoughts that resisted language and had to be transfigured through an instrument, turned into pure sound, spun into the air, and heard."
Some quotes I particularly liked:
"Since I had woken up on that pew, the meals had been endless and I wished I could have reached back and given one of them to those days of hunger in the past, or that I could have moved this plate to a place—there must have been such a place—where someone else was hungry."
"When you lose track of the person you know within a person they've become—what kind of grief is that?"
"We listened to the organ wail. Some time passed this way. It began to seem possible that a person might have pains and thoughts that resisted language and had to be transfigured through an instrument, turned into pure sound, spun into the air, and heard."