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I was impressed by this author’s writing in “Nobody is Ever Missing�� and gave that novel 4 stars, and will give this novel 4 stars too because again, this woman’s writing, is sometimes just striking. Very clever her use of words, some of those phrases, descriptions of things �� I never came across such descriptions, but a number of them resonated with me. Impressive.

I think my rating would have gone down if this book had been any longer than its 204 pages. Because, to me, although I thought the book had a clever structure to it, it would have gotten old and repetitive if it had gone on any longer. The length of the book seemed to be just right.

The structure was that various people in the unnamed town would drop into a chapter and be talking with Pew, a person of indeterminate age and sex and race. I could have said “talk to�� because Pew said next to nothing in the book, but s/he did listen and sometimes s/he nodded…I think one time s/he shook somebody’s hand when proffered it to her/him. The rare times s/he talked was typically one word and I think her/his longest utterances were “I can’t remember�� and “I was sleeping��.

Total times Pew talked that I counted was 9 times.

You’re not going to get a whole lot from her/him if you want to know the plot from what s/he says. It is her/his memories of things in the past, usually incomplete and difficult for her/him to latch on to, that one gets a disturbing sense that s/he has been violated or abused…almost to the point of catatonia. And w/he makes her/his most utterances to a young man, Nelson, who was orphaned and witnessed his whole family being killed in another country��

This book, near the end, reminded me a lot of ‘The Lottery�� by Shirley Jackson. There is an annual Forgiveness Festival that the church members are referring to throughout the book, and from what the reader can gather it does not seem that it’s you ordinary hum-drum run-of-the mill annual church festival. Like something nasty is going to happen. Did I already say that this book reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery? Oh, I did? Then it is time for me to end my review. 🙃

Book reviews:
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�� interview with Lacey about the book:
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