DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Pew

Catherine Lacey author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Granta Books

Published:6th May '21

Should be back in stock very soon

Pew cover

An eerie modern tale for fans of Shirley Jackson and Sarah Hall from a young American writer hailed as one of the finest of her generation

From the author of Biography of X, an eerie modern tale for fans of Shirley Jackson... '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. 'You can absolutely imagine the novel being made into a dark indie film by the Coen brothers or David Lynch' New Statesman

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 *
The mercurial and electric Catherine Lacey has now conjured up an of-the-moment fable of trauma and projection - one part Kaspar Hauser, one part James Purdy, and one part Rachel Cusk. The pages shimmer with implication -- Jonathan Lethem, author of * Motherless Brooklyn *

ISBN: 9781783785193

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 13mm

Weight: 162g

224 pages