Four Stars

Best for:
Those who enjoy a well-written fable. Those who don’t need certainty in their books.

In a nutshell:
Pew shows up in the town church one morning, and the townspeople don’t know what to do with them. Over the course of the week, Pew is pawned off on a variety of people who feel a strong need to fill the silence.

Worth quoting:
“You can’t be sure of who someone really is, or really was, before you knew them … or even after, sometimes.”

“But what about when you lose someone who is still alive? When you lose track of the person you know within a person they’ve become — what kind of grief is that?”

Why I chose it:
The plot was intriguing and I love a good meditation on life.

Review:
There is a lot going on in this book, but the plot itself is very simple: Pew, someone of indeterminate age, gender, and race (though likely young enough to not be considered an adult), has appeared in town, found sleeping in a church pew on a Sunday morning (hence the name). The family whose pew they were sleeping in decided to take them home, to decide ‘what to do with them.’

Right from the start, we know that Pew is different from most people we encounter. The entire book is told from their perspective, but they don’t have a lot of information to share about themselves; not with the reader and definitely not with the townspeople. They become almost a vessel or (in some cases) a dumping ground for the thoughts, concerns, and hopes of the people they encounter. Pew generally doesn’t speak, doesn’t touch others, but isn’t ‘rude’ or disagreeable. They are just there, and for the most part going along with what the townspeople demand they do, except for some (very understandable) moments when they refuse to participate.

Most of what happens in the book is in the discussions – well, in the talking at that occurs when people encounter Pew. Some people assume things about Pew’s background, like they must have suffered some horrible tragedy, or must have committed some crime. Some take Pew’s silence as rudeness or obstinance; others make kinder assumptions.

Some of the townspeople are full of self-righteousness. There are quite a few conversations that talk about people being born wicked, broken, needed religion. On the flip side, some conversations explore the idea that it’s a bit of a shame that some folks appear to need religion to even consider being kind to others.

The biggest running theme I saw was how desperate some people are to be able to put folks into boxes. They need to know someone’s age, their background, their race, their gender, so they can feel comfortable and make the necessary assumptions about them. And how when they don’t have that information, they can get more and more frustrated, and can assume the worst. At the same time, it is clear throughout the interactions in the book that knowing what people are willing to share about themselves doesn’t necessarily mean one knows them at all. With information or not, people make assumptions and categorize people in ways that may or may not be accurate, and that isn’t great.

One thing I found interesting is that throughout all of this, none of Pew’s narration sounds like them judging anyone. They’re observing, they’re interacting, but even when some fairly shitty action and assumptions are made about them, they aren’t interested in using that information to make judgments about the person’s individual character.

I could imagine reading this multiple times and getting something different out of it each time.

What’s next for this book:
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