Lucky Girls: Stories (P.S.) [Paperback]

Nell Freudenberger (Author)

Book Description

Series: P.S. | Publication Date: September 5, 2006

These five stories follow young women living far from home, coping with new and often unfamiliar rules, as they confront the compelling circumstances of adult love. The rich, unforgettable tales in this collection, set in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent, showcase a writer of exceptional talent, one of today's most gifted and exciting young voices.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nell Freudenberger knows from lucky girls. She has had a lot of luck herself in her short writing career: Her debut story was featured in The New Yorker, with a glossy full-color author photo alongside; a quick book contract ensued, on the strength of that one published story; and now comes a debut collection full of stories that are actually good. The Lucky Girls collected here are far-flung Americans, young women trying to figure out where they belong in the world. In "The Tutor," teenage Julia and her businessman father are living in Bombay; her mother has returned to the United States. Julia crams for the SATs with her tutor Zubin, smokes cigarettes, and goes to nightclubs; her father hovers at home. Freudenberger gets just right the moments when Julia and her father find themselves alone together, trying to be a family: "It was just the two of them at the table then; even with the leaves taken out and stored against the wall in the coat closet, they had to half-stand in order to pass the soup." Too, she knows the upper-class world of which she writes. In "The Orphan," Mandy's parents and brother come to visit her in Thailand, where she is working with "AIDS babies." Mandy's brother Josh appears, and Freudenberger skewers his type, neatly, in a sentence: "Josh looks like someone coming out of trench warfare in the Balkans, rather than college in Maine." But Freudenberger isn't telling easy rich-kid stories. She's forever pushing her narration. In "The Tutor," we hear from Zubin, an overeducated Indian, as well as from Julia. "The Orphan," in turn, is told by Mandy's mom, a woman bewildered by yet proud of her daughter's choice to remain in Thailand. Freudenberger's stories are cosmopolitan, expansive, and richly detailed, a beguiling combination of qualities. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Freudenberger saw her first story, "Lucky Girls," published in the New Yorker's 2001 debut fiction issue and subsequently received a reported six-figure sum to round out the collection with a bunch more (at that time unwritten) works. The gamble has paid off, at least from a critical perspective: the five long stories in this collection are thoughtful and entertaining. Most take place in Asia and feature Americans living abroad. In the title piece, a young American painter recalls her long affair with a married Indian man. The man has died unexpectedly, and the story traces the development of the narrator's antagonistic yet moving relationship with the mother of her late lover. "The Orphan" is a witty story of a middle-aged couple who, along with their college-age son, go to Thailand for Christmas to visit their daughter and break the news of their impending divorce. The daughter, who works at a Bangkok hospital for orphaned AIDS babies, finds her parents benighted and so... Western, while her brother announces that he belongs to the Cool Rich Kids club, whose members seek to give their parents' money away ("it's this chance to endorse the more radical causes that people your age wouldn't support"). In "The Tutor," a romance blossoms between an Indian SAT coach and a Prada-wearing American teenager living in Bombay who wants nothing more than to get into UC-Berkeley. Many of these tales concern the slow birth and disintegration of romantic relationships, although some lack pull, due to their one-dimensional characters. Freudenberger is more inventive and piquant when she probes characters' relationships to their adopted homelands-which, she shows, are often more passionate and grounded than their ties to the people in their lives.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061124273
• ISBN-13: 978-0061124273
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,215,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wish I'd like it, but..., October 30, 2003

By 

Jill Sterling (Crested Butte, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucky Girls: Stories (Hardcover)

It's funny--most of the positive reviews for this book seem to be from the New York area--where the author is from--I feel fairly certain they're friends of hers. The strories here are just dismally mediocre, the "musings" of the socially privileged and insulated..the author just doesn't seem to have anything to say. It's certainly not envy that provokes me to write this--I am a reader, not a writer--I cheer every time a good book comes into the world but this one made me sigh with frustration. It's just...flat and amateurish. I think the so-called "jealous" reviews below are more bewilderment that this author has gotten so much unwarranted media attention when there are so many worthier candidates...sigh--better luck next time.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I Am Disappointed., January 31, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Lucky Girls: Stories (Hardcover)

I really am. I didn't buy this book- thank God- but I've waited since we've acquired it at our public library- about eight months- to check it out. Let me tell you- it's like opening a Christmas present that has sat under the tree for a month, mysterious and promising, only to find that it's something "practical" or a "great bargain". And of course Lucky Girls was neither of these, even. The writing was bland and too safe-side, completely without imagination. Even the subjects were bland. Freudenberger managed to take a whole country with more allure than 97 percent of the places on this planet and water it down to a mere setting, not much different than my back yard Suburbia (even with all the references to poverty- which were just that: references). And Freudenberger doesn't connect herSELF to her own characters- how can she expect us, as readers, to connect to them?

I predict (and I'll eat my words if things work out to the contrary) that she'll have a novel out within a year and a half. There will be gobs of hype about it, with a lot of false assumptions about the warm reception of her collection of stories to fool readers into feeling they've been waiting for this novel forEVER. And it may even be a bestseller, but the novel will recieve such half-convinced reviews that we'll not be hearing from Freudenberger for a long time after that- or until she's at last found her strengths and weaknesses and worked them out- artistically, that is.

And, by the way, she's a very lovely girl. And sex sells. And all's fair in the publishing industry. The truth obviously comes out- as we've seen just in this small space on Amazon- when people concentrate on the content, but people like Freudenberger need all the head start they can get when they write so dispassionately.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars merely "okay", January 10, 2006

By 

underwater girl "underwater_girl" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucky Girls: Stories (Paperback)

This book presents an interesting dilemna--not good enough to be something memorable, but not bad enough to be a complete train wreck. The author has clearly spent time researching and revising. Although meticulous, her writing is not strong enough to carry this book without the "spark" of something like a plot, deeper insight, more humor, etc.

These stories are all about expat, young, upperclass women living in Asia. I'm amazed by how stories set in the most exotic (At least from the perspective of a middle class person living in the US) places can be described in such an uninteresting manner.

Many reviewers seem angry that this book was offered a $500,000 advance, when it of such an average, writer's workshop quality. These reviewers should remember to review novels solely on their merits, not over any bitterness or anger towards the author. For a truly interesting and well written novel about expat women, read "Interesting Women" by Andrea Lee.