A review by beau_reads_books
Pew by Catherine Lacey

5.0

I knew about halfway through this would stick to me like a flytrap. Every time I put the book down and walked away, it’d end up in my hands again. I’m gonna bring this up in conversation at weird times, I just know it. Lacey perfectly provokes an uncomfortable, out of place narrative; something akin to harm negotiation. Simultaneously creating a cutting remark on the lengths people will go to punish someone for being different in the name of routine and tradition. There’s a silent threat that sits just behind the pages, one that anyone outside of “Pleasantville” normal has heard. There’s a raw, plaintive feeling to Lacey’s writing that adds a dreadful edge to this story. But, there’s also a hell of a lot of hope.

The connection/nods to Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” isn’t so much presumptuous as other reviewers made it out to be: that’s literally… literature? “Pew” offers a parallel perspective of the hegemonic “Omelas” Le Guin carefully constructed 50 odd years ago to reflect the simple horror that nothing’s really changed, and it may never.

5/5 If my reviews were to ever hit the back of novels, “Pew”’s verb would have said “Masterfully unsettling…provocative…I wanted to read it again the moment I put it down.”