Lucid Stars [Paperback]

Andrea Barrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 1997

From the 1996 National Book Award-winning author of Ship Fever and Other Stories. What begins as a classic boy-meets-girl tale in 1955 becomes something far different when marriage and two children do not bring a family closer together. Lucid Stars is the moving story of how one family learns to survive by becoming a planetary system that just happens to be missing its sun.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Delta Fiction's fine debut is marked by a quietly charming, seductive first novel whose author launches a career that promises to be as bright as the constellations that inform these pages. The dynamics of the modern broken home and the complex relationships engendered by divorce and remarriage are limned here with rare sensitivity and insight. The agile Barrett convincingly relates the story from the diverse perspectives of two mothers and two daughters. In her skilled hands, a 23-year time span is credible and the star motif never stales. Penny finds solace, self-affirmation and freedom in astronomy, and her strength and passion bolster her ex-husband Ben's second family, whom he eventually abandons for a third. Her daughter Cass, wounded and confused by her parents' divorce and her father's incapacity to love, knows that childhood is a cruel status: "They're trapped in these small bodies, stuck in a land where the natives treat them as if they're deaf, blind, and crippled . . . . Her only refuge is that place inside her head where she retreats with her books and her projects." Although he links the other protagonists, the hypnotic Ben remains a deliberately vague character because he is a black hole"What goes into him goes in and is lost forever." Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Depicting two decades in the life of a Cape Cod family and the relationships that arise from its dissolution, this first novel is a moving exploration of the nature of family. The story focuses on the women and children in the orbit of Ben Day, playboy skier turned real estate developer. Ben's need for the reassurance of younger women wrecks havoc with those around him. It first ends his marriage to Penny, the independent woman with a passion for astronomy he meets at a New Hampshire resort, and later to Diane, his pretty but vapid secretary. For those hurt by Ben, healing comes in an unusual forma loose-knit "family" composed of his ex-wives and children as well as various relatives and lovers, a family that provides a love and acceptance not found with the emotionally destructive Ben. An impressive debut. Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Delta (January 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385319436
• ISBN-13: 978-0385319430
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,979,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrea Barrett was born in Boston, MA in 1954 and grew up on Cape Cod. She studied biology at Union College, in Schenectady, NY and started writing fiction in her twenties, after several brief stints in graduate school. She lived in Rochester, NY for many years and now lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, photographer Barry Goldstein. She's the author of six novels, most recently THE AIR WE BREATHE, and two collections of stories: SHIP FEVER, which received the 1996 National Book Award, and SERVANTS OF THE MAP, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly enjoyable, January 6, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucid Stars (Paperback)

Andrea Barrett tells the story of three females living during the late 50's, the 60's and the 70's - the time period of the modern women's movement. Using her considerable skills as a short story writer, Ms. Barrett weaves her three characters into a whole; a connectedness usually only yearned for and not accomplished. Using lucid stars as a metaphor for that which can be seen by the naked eye having greater potential, depth and brilliance if seen with more perception, Andrea Barrett reveals the complexity and promise of all late 20th century women. What pleased me most was that her female characters were still growing when the book ended.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars You can do better., June 11, 2000

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lucid Stars (Paperback)

After just over two months of struggling with this boring, inspsid, uninspiring novel, I finally sent it flying out the window into a convenient rainstorm last week. It's not so much that it's a BAD book, really (although insipid is probably the best word I can think of to describe it), it's just that it's been done so much better. Okay, here's the scenario. Young girl from small town is swept off her feet by cosmopolitan socialite, gets pregnant, gets married, finds out that life married to cosmopolitan socialite ain't that great, has kid, leaves cosmopolitan socialite, cos. so. marries second wife, first wife and daughter heal rift. Hmmmm. We've never heard THAT one before.

Once again, we have an overused half-baked plot, and we have a convenient piece of excellent work to hold it up against. If you want a dysfunctional family circus, it's hard to do better than Michael Cunningham's _Flesh and Blood_. It's good that people try, because eventually someone _will_ write a better, funnier, sadder, more intimate novel than Cunningham's, but the discerning reader will realize, by now, that in order to find the bigger pearl, one will be reading a whole lot of swine.

0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too bad it didn't age well, March 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lucid Stars (Paperback)

I read this book because it was recommended as one I might like by Amazon. Reader, beware. This book was pretty much a waste of time, set in a rather uninteresting Cape Cod, with inadequate character development and no plot to speak of. Probably fresher when it was new.