A review by ameronie
Pew by Catherine Lacey

mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

this packs so much, especially a lot of philosophical questions that the text never actually answers. thereby it mostly reflects the reader's morals and ideas around identity, trauma, community, religion, gender, race, forgiveness etc. as the protagonist, pew, is an ambigious figure that does only engage in communication when it's urgently needed. by not being much more than that, pew functions as a disturbance to the day to day norm and therefore needs to be categorised, understood and made to want to assimilate. i'm sure there are plenty of contexts this can be applied to. and as interesting and hugely important as those discussions are, the book didn't add anything new though i enjoyed reading it. the ending felt anticlimatic and confusing, the way racism was explored lazy. also, i'm still not sure how intertwined the story actually is with 'the ones who walk away from omelas'. 
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