{"product_id":"pew-9780374230920","title":"Pew","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"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 \u003ci\u003eThe Flamethrowers \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e's Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2020, one of the \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e's Nine Best Books to Read This Spring, one of \u003ci\u003eBuzzFeed\u003c\/i\u003e's Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of \u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e's 20 Must-Read Books of Summer 2020, one of \u003ci\u003eVulture\u003c\/i\u003e's Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2020, one of Refinery29's 25 Books You'll Want to Read This Summer, one of \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times' \u003c\/i\u003eSummer Books of 2020, and one of \u003ci\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/i\u003e Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew's presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew's story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are--a devil or an angel or something else entirely--is dwarfed by even larger truths. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003ePew\u003c\/i\u003e, Catherine Lacey's third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters' true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/21\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780374230920\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.65lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.60h x 5.30w x 0.80d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal Prepub Alert\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/01\/2019 pg. 55\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/10\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 03\/01\/2020 pg. 22\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 03\/01\/2020 pg. 24\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Catherine Lacey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36636612952220,"sku":"9780374230920","price":22.1,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_94bc86c8-6ad4-4a4f-8054-55cf0aeb2be6.jpg?v=1603842436","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/pew-9780374230920","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}