Lucy [Hardcover]

Jamaica Kincaid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 1990

Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to America to work as an au pair for a wealthy couple. She begins to notice cracks in their beautiful façade at the same time that the mysteries of own sexuality begin to unravel. Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new heroine who is destined to win a place of honor in contemporary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kincaid ( At the Bottom of the River ; Annie John ) has with this novel created an insouciant yet vulnerable narrator in the person of Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies who works as an au pair for a seemingly happy family in an unidentified city that one assumes is New York. Lucy is fascinated with her discoveries about American life--"At first it was all so new that I had to smile with my mouth turned down at the corners"--and with Mariah, Lewis and their four golden little daughters. Their pleasure in life intrigues Lucy, who observes, "Even when a little rain fell, they would admire the way it streaked through the blank air." Lucy has renounced her own family and past, but at the same time she paradoxically expresses culturally imbued views with arrogance. She sees the world around her with both awe and contempt, and maintains a unique dead certainty about how people are. Her own sexual exploits seem more mysterious to her than the deterioration of Lewis and Mariah's marriage, which she presciently and detachedly observes. This is a slim book but Kincaid has crafted it with a spare elegance that has brilliance in its very simplicity. Lucy's is a haunting voice, and Kincaid's originality has never been more evident. First serial to the New Yorker; Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Like her Annie John ( LJ 4/1/85), Kincaid's new heroine travels the coming-of-age road. Lucy, a 19-year-old West Indi an, sheds her cloistered colonial upbringing by accepting a job as an au pair in New York--the perfect setting for satisfying her gluttonous appetite for both mental and sensual stimulation. The startling disintegration of her employers' marriage triggers flashbacks of home and family; the reflected details are unsettling. Lucy finds being born "woman" places her in a territory she wants to explore and at the same time escape. As she begins her exploration, cathartic tears blur the first pages of her diary. But Lucy plunges ahead, reassured by the discovery of an authentic self. Strong in style and substance, dazzling with its sharp-edged prose, this is a novel no one should miss. Literary Guild selection; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/90.
- Bibi S. Thompson, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 164 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 22, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374194343
• ISBN-13: 978-0374194345
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #108,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jamaica Kincaid's works include, Mr Potter, The Autobiography of My Mother, and My Brother, a memoir. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Island Girl's Coming of Age in the States, October 21, 2002

By 

Dera R Williams (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lucy: A Novel (Paperback)

This classic, Kincaid's tale of a West Indian girl who comes to the States and becomes an au pair to a wealthy white couple, has been re-released. I first read this novel about ten years ago as my introduction to Kincaid's writing and was both intrigued and in awe of her language, themes, and symbolic language.

Until she was nineteen years old, Lucy Potter had not ventured from her own little world on the small island where she was born. Now she is living with a family and learning a culture that is very different from her own. Lewis and Mariah and their four daughters want Lucy to feel like she is part of the family but at first she finds it difficult to fit in. She just wants to do her duty and in her off-hours discovers a new world through her friend Peggy and sexuality through young men, Hugh and Paul.

Lucy often reflects on her life back on the island; the conflicts between she and her mother, and the British influence on the islanders. She remembers when she and her friends would read the Book of Revelations using the passages to terrify each other. She also remembers the time her mother showed her how to mix herbs that supposedly would cleanse a woman's womb but what they both knew was an abortion remedy. Lucy knows what is expected of her, to study for a respectable job like a nurse and to honor her family. She finds out that the tidy, neat world of the family she has come to love is not all it purports to be and how silence is a universal language.

Kincaid's language is outstanding in remembering her home; "the color of six o'clock in the evening" is just one example. It is well known that her writing draws from her life experiences as in The Autobiography of My Mother and My Brother and I look forward to her latest offering, Mr. Potter which is reportedly based on her father's life. Kincaid was my introduction to writers of Caribbean descent and remains one of the greats. I actual rating for this book is a 4.5.-----
Dera Williams
Apooo Bookclub

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply and Beautifully Rendered, April 27, 2000

By 

"onna" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucy (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Paperback)

This is a very simple story which starts off with several conventional plot twists but ends on a poignant, and somewhat surprising, note. However, by the novel's end, Lucy manages to captivate the reader, and the story somehow manages to resonate within the reader long after the novel has been finished. Kincaid tells Lucy's story eloquently and lyrically and convincingly draws out several themes which help to give the story breadth and depth. Dispossession and alienation from one's homeland and family, mother-daughter relationships, the middle class family, and Lucy's sexuality are only some of the themes that are explored in the novel. Lucy's voice is strong and individual, and she clearly emerges as a character of complexity and strength.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, Provocative, Thought-Provoking, and Angry, December 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lucy (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Paperback)

In a graceful and simplistic, yet deceptive, writing style, Caribbean author Jamaica Kincaid examines and scrutinizes the [white middle class] American way of life in LUCY. This novel is 164 pages of pure social commentary, whether it be of America or of Kincaid's native Antigua. Throughout her work, Kincaid confronts challenging issues related to mother-daughter relationships, marriage, puberty and sexuality, and love. This book was meant to be talked about.