Lucy

In this short novel, 19-year-old Lucy leaves her home in Antigua and comes to America to be an au pair for a family of four young children. The book is set over the stretch of a year and follows her experiences as a new immigrant. Lucy has come to America to get away from stifling relationships and a particularly toxic relationship with her martyr of a mother, but she cannot really connect with anyone, drifting through relationships with men and even holding her only friend, Peggy, at arm’s length. I felt I wanted to know more about why she left home, filled her with the rage that seethes through her, numbing her from seizing the day, enjoying the wonderous moments of her life, and wallowing in her never-named unfulfilled show more expectations. The most interesting observation to me: “Everyone knew that men have no morals, that they do not know how to behave, that they do not know how to treat other people. It was why men like laws so much; it was why they had to invent such things--they need a guide.” Food for thought for sure. show less

I'm more than a little bit ambivalent about this work but in the end I gave it the rating it might garner if viewed as a YA read.

Quite dispassionately, this is the "longest little book I've ever read". It is really more of a novella: in fact, probably just a longish short story, but it goes on forever. And ever. Or so I felt. Like those false endings in movies, when you think the end is near, and then they throw in another ending, this one could have ended 5 chapters ago, and one wouldn't have missed a thing.

Touted as a "coming-of-age" novel, I don't see that it deserves the accolade. There is no growth here: just a bitter and cynical young woman who carries a chip on her shoulder the size of the island she just left behind. Neither show more does she look to leave it behind, grinding the same old axe at the same old wheel. Pardon the overdone cliché, but Kincaid left me feeling more than a little blasé about Lucy.

I found it to be lacking in depth of emotion -- especially for a young woman who is out on her own for the very first time. She speaks as if she is dream-walking through her life and everything that has happened to her is just a passing footnote in her history. I doubt very much that humans react in such a way, unless they are exposed to deep and prolonged trauma. From what the story reveals, Lucy experiences no such trauma: or at least not any more than any one who has had a passingly difficult childhood. (Queue starts here: take a number.)

Ultimately, Lucy is a construct that fails, but with some beauty attached. Kincaid's prose is beautiful, if sparse. She has quite a knack for lovely writing, in fact. But for this novel, it is much too artificial. Kincaid's own words can be used to describe how I feel about this novel, ultimately: "It was a song that was very popular at the time -- three girls, not older than I was, singing in harmony and in a very insincere and artificial way about love and so on. It was very beautiful all the same, and it was beautiful because it was so insincere and artificial." (p.11)

My rating would be 2 stars. I gave it 3, thinking that this might be just the sort of novel YA readers might relate to, and enjoy, in their angst-ridden wisdom. show less

The second Jamaica Kincaid novel I've read and she's fast becoming a favourite writer. Her seemingly simple storytelling draws the reader in and locks one into such an intense world.

Lucy is a young Black woman who immigrates to the U.S. to work as an au pair to an upper class white couple's four children, and studying at night to be a nurse. This was beautifully written, with vignettes that go back to the protagonist's life before immigrating and the world she's left.

Upon looking at the comments of other reviewers, I see that Lucy seems to be a sort of marmite book, but I really admire the writing and the writer. Even though it is fiction, it feels so blazingly honest: young Lucy's anger, especially at her mother, is sadly harsh but fully believable given the protagonist's age and circumstances.

DNF

Lucy is filled with so much self righteous indignation, and maybe it’s justified (only read 30 pages), but the way she is constantly spewing bitterness and venom unto everyone around her as if they are personally responsible for all of her issues and anger is a major buzzkill. We get why you hate daffodils, but you don’t have to poison someone else’s love for them just so they too can suffer like you. What a miserable character.

i enjoyed this. a matteroffact first person examining/explication of unhappiness, the kind of unhappiness that is ordinary, expected, and so damningly universal. jamaica kincaid has written it in a way that is so deeply empathetic. very nice

Lucy is an insightful novel of a young au pair's first year away from her Caribbean home. As an au pair to a wealthy family she learns of first-world problems and gradually begins to resolve her own feelings about her past and her family, particularly her mother--and begins to break away to create a home and a life of her own.