What do you think?
Rate this book
Lucy
Echappée à sa famille, à son île et à son passé, Lucy, une jeune Antillaise de dix-neuf ans, devient fille au pair dans un foyer bourgeois de New York. Avec une froideur quasi clinique, elle observe et dissèque son nouvel entourage tout en se confrontant à ses propres fantômes : un père qui ne l'a pas aimée et une mère pour laquelle elle éprouve autant de haine que d'amour. Et si elle s'accoutume peu à peu à ce climat jusqu'alors inconnu, son sentiment d'extranéité demeure. Absente au monde, tout entière obsédée par son trouble intérieur, hantée par ses origines, son sexe et sa couleur, elle ne voit d'issue qu'en l'écriture : une tentative de se parler à soi-même, comme l'aveu d'une profonde solitude. Comme dans Mon frère ou dans Autobiographie de ma mère, la singulière voix de Jamaica Kincaid continue de témoigner d'un sentiment de différence inguérissable.
163 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
289 people are currently reading
19.7k people want to read
About the author
Jamaica Kincaid
88books1,641followersJamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua (part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda). She lives in North Bennington, Vermont (in the United States), during the summers, and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,215 reviews
May 6, 2008
I have read other Jamaica Kincaid novels and loved them, and I would love to teach her but haven't found the right place for doing so, particularly because Kincaid's style is quite abrasive. When I found out LUCY is about an au pair, I thought it might make a great companion to JANE EYRE, esp since Kincaid is clearly influenced by Bronte. Then, almost as soon as I started reading it, I came across the following passage, which I found completely awesome, but which is the kind of thing that I would imagine makes Kincaid hard to teach to undergrads:
"I had placed these letters [from her family back home] inside my brassiere, and carried them around with me wherever I went. It was not from feelings of love and longing that I did this; quite the contrary. It was from a feeling of hatred." (20)
Then, this passage, when her employer takes her to see daffodils for the first time and she doesn't know what they are:
"... they looked beautiful; they looked simple, as if made to erase a complicated and unnecessary idea I did not know what these flowers were, and so it was a mystery to me why I wanted to kill them. Just like that. I wanted to kill them. I wished that I had an enormous scythe; I would just walk down the path, dragging it alongside me, and I would cut these flowers down at the place where they emerged from the ground" (29).
Now, Kincaid does end up explaining why Lucy has this feeling, and it's very important, but I can just see my students now: "Why is the protagonist so angry"? Kincaid's ability to allow her female protagonists to unleash hatred, anger, and cruelty is one of my favorite things about her. Female characters are supposed to be nice, likeable, and what Kincaid does is show the completely justified rage of a young woman from a colonized country who both loves and hates both where she's from and where she is now. But anger, I've found, is something very difficult for college students to truly comprehend; they want characters to appeal to them on the basis of their shared humanity and desire to teach, rather than on the basis of their difference and their desire for some kind of revenge, or at least a lesson that will hurt.
Maybe I've just talked myself into why I actually should teach this novel after all.
"I had placed these letters [from her family back home] inside my brassiere, and carried them around with me wherever I went. It was not from feelings of love and longing that I did this; quite the contrary. It was from a feeling of hatred." (20)
Then, this passage, when her employer takes her to see daffodils for the first time and she doesn't know what they are:
"... they looked beautiful; they looked simple, as if made to erase a complicated and unnecessary idea I did not know what these flowers were, and so it was a mystery to me why I wanted to kill them. Just like that. I wanted to kill them. I wished that I had an enormous scythe; I would just walk down the path, dragging it alongside me, and I would cut these flowers down at the place where they emerged from the ground" (29).
Now, Kincaid does end up explaining why Lucy has this feeling, and it's very important, but I can just see my students now: "Why is the protagonist so angry"? Kincaid's ability to allow her female protagonists to unleash hatred, anger, and cruelty is one of my favorite things about her. Female characters are supposed to be nice, likeable, and what Kincaid does is show the completely justified rage of a young woman from a colonized country who both loves and hates both where she's from and where she is now. But anger, I've found, is something very difficult for college students to truly comprehend; they want characters to appeal to them on the basis of their shared humanity and desire to teach, rather than on the basis of their difference and their desire for some kind of revenge, or at least a lesson that will hurt.
Maybe I've just talked myself into why I actually should teach this novel after all.
October 26, 2015
"That morning, the morning of my first day, the morning that followed my first night, was a sunny morning. It was not the sort of bright sun-yellow making everything curl at the edges, almost in fright, that I was used to, but a pale-yellow sun, as if the sun had grown weak from trying too hard to shine; but still it was sunny, and that was nice and made me miss my home less." Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy
In many ways I feel as though the protagonist of Kincaid's "Annie John" found her way into this book, except instead of leaving Antigua for England, she goes to America to work as an au pair for a rich American family. This results in an interesting coming-of-age story, with themes of race and migration added to it, as well as colonialism, the remnants of which continue to reverberate.
This book definitely resonated with me and I could relate to Lucy's experiences in some sense. Having myself left a former British colony for Canada at the same age as Lucy, I also remember having similar observations about my second stint in the West, especially as an adult. Although my observations were not quite as strong as Lucy's due to travel and other factors, I could understand her feelings of wanting to leave her home, to start a new life away from meddling eyes, but missing her home when she did eventually leave, because those were my exact sentiments too. Growing into womanhood away from a familiar and protective environment, yes, I can relate.
But unlike Lucy, it took me years until I could put a finger on what annoyed me about people's questions about home; the way they asked them, and what they asked:
"I wished once again that I came from a place where no one wanted to go, a place that was filled with slag and unexpectedly erupting volcanoes...Somehow it made me ashamed to come from a place where the only thing to be said about it was "I had fun when I was there."
The idea of symbols and images meaning different things to different people was an especially interesting point. In particular, the daffodil, to the American woman, meant the beauty of Spring and the promises of new beginnings, while for Lucy who'd had to learn Wordsworth's poem, it meant remembering colonialism and the absurdity of having to memorize poems about flowers that didn't even grow in her part of the world.
"I felt sorry that I had cast her beloved daffodils in a scene she had never considered, a scene of conquered and conquests..."
But what an unlikable character the protagonist was. I found her thoughts and revelations quite interesting but she was so bitter! I wonder what the reasons were, as she seemed too old to be experiencing teen angst. Still, I really enjoyed this book, primarily because of Kincaid's absolutely beautiful writing style.
In many ways I feel as though the protagonist of Kincaid's "Annie John" found her way into this book, except instead of leaving Antigua for England, she goes to America to work as an au pair for a rich American family. This results in an interesting coming-of-age story, with themes of race and migration added to it, as well as colonialism, the remnants of which continue to reverberate.
This book definitely resonated with me and I could relate to Lucy's experiences in some sense. Having myself left a former British colony for Canada at the same age as Lucy, I also remember having similar observations about my second stint in the West, especially as an adult. Although my observations were not quite as strong as Lucy's due to travel and other factors, I could understand her feelings of wanting to leave her home, to start a new life away from meddling eyes, but missing her home when she did eventually leave, because those were my exact sentiments too. Growing into womanhood away from a familiar and protective environment, yes, I can relate.
But unlike Lucy, it took me years until I could put a finger on what annoyed me about people's questions about home; the way they asked them, and what they asked:
"I wished once again that I came from a place where no one wanted to go, a place that was filled with slag and unexpectedly erupting volcanoes...Somehow it made me ashamed to come from a place where the only thing to be said about it was "I had fun when I was there."
The idea of symbols and images meaning different things to different people was an especially interesting point. In particular, the daffodil, to the American woman, meant the beauty of Spring and the promises of new beginnings, while for Lucy who'd had to learn Wordsworth's poem, it meant remembering colonialism and the absurdity of having to memorize poems about flowers that didn't even grow in her part of the world.
"I felt sorry that I had cast her beloved daffodils in a scene she had never considered, a scene of conquered and conquests..."
But what an unlikable character the protagonist was. I found her thoughts and revelations quite interesting but she was so bitter! I wonder what the reasons were, as she seemed too old to be experiencing teen angst. Still, I really enjoyed this book, primarily because of Kincaid's absolutely beautiful writing style.
July 9, 2023
| | | | | |
From the very first page, I was enthralled by Lucy’s deceptively simple narration. To begin with, I was struck by the clarity of her observations and the directness of her statements. As I kept reading, however, I came to realise just how enigmatic a character she was.
After leaving her homeland, an unnamed island in the West Indies, Lucy becomes an au pair for a white and wealthy couple in North America. Although Lucy wants to leave her past behind, her alienating new surroundings make her homesick. Lucy tries to acclimatise to the colder climate, to American’s strange customs, to her new role. As she tries to adjust to her new home, she becomes closer to her employer, Mariah. Her obliviousness, however, frustrates Lucy as Mariah seems incapable or unwilling to acknowledge her privilege or their cultural differences, seeming content to live in a bubble.
Lucy strikes a friendship with Peggy, a young woman from Ireland. While the two share a sense of otherness (“From the moment we met we had recognized in each other the same restlessness, the same dissatisfaction with our surroundings, the same skin-doesn’t-fit-ness.�), Peggy is far more of a bohemian. Lucy’s relationship with Mariah begins to fray, partly because of Peggy’s influence, partly due to Lucy’s growing disillusionment towards her employers and their after all not-so-perfect marriage.
As Lucy recounts her time as an au pair, her mind often drifts towards her childhood. We know that her strained relationship with her mother had an enormous impact on her, but we are only given glimpses of their time together. As Lucy attempts to navigate her new life, we come to learn why she has become so unwilling to be truly known by others. Through what we learn of her past, and through the things she leaves unspoken, we begin to understand Lucy’s obliqueness, her remoteness, her alienation, her self-division (which she describes as a “two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another; outside false, inside true�), her attitude towards others and her sexuality.
Lucy is an unremittingly ambiguous and fascinating character-study. Գ’s polished prose is deeply alluring: from the evocative descriptions of the weather to Lucy’s penetrating deliberations.
I was also drawn by the parallels Kincaid makes between Lucy and Villette (which happens to be one of my favourite novels of all time). Գ’s Lucy leaves her homeland to become an au pair, while Brontë’s Lucy leaves England to become a teacher in a small town in Belgium. Both women are ambivalent towards their past and disinclined to let others know who they are or what they ‘feel�. They both experience a sense of displacement and have to adapt to another culture. They also both become ‘involved� with men who are called Paul (Brontë’s Paul owns a slave plantation). In many ways, Lucy functions as a reworking of Villette, as it subverts its colonial narrative (more than once Lucy's informs us of the inadequacy of her British colonial education) and provides a more modern exploration of gender roles, sexuality, and sexual repression.
Throughout the course of Lucy’s tale Kincaid examines the way in which one’s family can affect an individual’s self-perception and the damage that parental favouritism has on a child’s self-worth.
Գ’s Lucy is an incessantly intriguing novel. I was mesmerised by her prose, by her inscrutable main character, and by the opaqueness and lucidity of her narrative.
Kincaid beautifully articulates Lucy’s feelings—her desire, contempt, guilt, despair—without ever revealing too much. Lucy retains an air of unknowability. Similarly, the mother-daughter bond that is at the heart of the novel remains shrouded in mystery.
/ / /View all my reviews on ŷ
“Everything I could see looked unreal to me; everything I could see made me feel I would never be part of it, never penetrate to the inside, never be taken in.�
From the very first page, I was enthralled by Lucy’s deceptively simple narration. To begin with, I was struck by the clarity of her observations and the directness of her statements. As I kept reading, however, I came to realise just how enigmatic a character she was.
“Oh, I had imagined that with my one swift act—leaving home and coming to this new place—I could leave behind me, as if it were an old garment never to be worn again, my sad thoughts, my sad feelings, and my discontent with life in general as it presented itself to me.�
After leaving her homeland, an unnamed island in the West Indies, Lucy becomes an au pair for a white and wealthy couple in North America. Although Lucy wants to leave her past behind, her alienating new surroundings make her homesick. Lucy tries to acclimatise to the colder climate, to American’s strange customs, to her new role. As she tries to adjust to her new home, she becomes closer to her employer, Mariah. Her obliviousness, however, frustrates Lucy as Mariah seems incapable or unwilling to acknowledge her privilege or their cultural differences, seeming content to live in a bubble.
Lucy strikes a friendship with Peggy, a young woman from Ireland. While the two share a sense of otherness (“From the moment we met we had recognized in each other the same restlessness, the same dissatisfaction with our surroundings, the same skin-doesn’t-fit-ness.�), Peggy is far more of a bohemian. Lucy’s relationship with Mariah begins to fray, partly because of Peggy’s influence, partly due to Lucy’s growing disillusionment towards her employers and their after all not-so-perfect marriage.
As Lucy recounts her time as an au pair, her mind often drifts towards her childhood. We know that her strained relationship with her mother had an enormous impact on her, but we are only given glimpses of their time together. As Lucy attempts to navigate her new life, we come to learn why she has become so unwilling to be truly known by others. Through what we learn of her past, and through the things she leaves unspoken, we begin to understand Lucy’s obliqueness, her remoteness, her alienation, her self-division (which she describes as a “two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another; outside false, inside true�), her attitude towards others and her sexuality.
Lucy is an unremittingly ambiguous and fascinating character-study. Գ’s polished prose is deeply alluring: from the evocative descriptions of the weather to Lucy’s penetrating deliberations.
I was also drawn by the parallels Kincaid makes between Lucy and Villette (which happens to be one of my favourite novels of all time). Գ’s Lucy leaves her homeland to become an au pair, while Brontë’s Lucy leaves England to become a teacher in a small town in Belgium. Both women are ambivalent towards their past and disinclined to let others know who they are or what they ‘feel�. They both experience a sense of displacement and have to adapt to another culture. They also both become ‘involved� with men who are called Paul (Brontë’s Paul owns a slave plantation). In many ways, Lucy functions as a reworking of Villette, as it subverts its colonial narrative (more than once Lucy's informs us of the inadequacy of her British colonial education) and provides a more modern exploration of gender roles, sexuality, and sexual repression.
“I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.�
Throughout the course of Lucy’s tale Kincaid examines the way in which one’s family can affect an individual’s self-perception and the damage that parental favouritism has on a child’s self-worth.
Գ’s Lucy is an incessantly intriguing novel. I was mesmerised by her prose, by her inscrutable main character, and by the opaqueness and lucidity of her narrative.
Kincaid beautifully articulates Lucy’s feelings—her desire, contempt, guilt, despair—without ever revealing too much. Lucy retains an air of unknowability. Similarly, the mother-daughter bond that is at the heart of the novel remains shrouded in mystery.
/ / /View all my reviews on ŷ
December 28, 2020
This book spoke to me. I think it will speak to many women.
I love Գ’s writing. It is expressive. It captures wonderfully how people feel and think. It is thought provoking.
I will give you a few quotes that spoke to ME:
“Everybody 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. When they are not sure what to do, they consult this guide. If the guide gives them advice they don't like, they change the guide.�
“I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.�
“She had too much of everything, and so she longed to have less; less, she was sure, would bring her happiness. To me it was a laugh and a relief to observe the unhappiness that too much can bring; I had been so used to observing the results of too little.�
I also suggest you read through the author quotes here: /quotes/sear...
They range from contemplative to humorous to wise.
The story has autobiographical elements, but it is fiction. A nineteen-year-old girl from the West Indies, Lucy, is sent as an au pair to America. She has employment for one year and is to care for four young girls of a well-off, good-looking couple. We follow Lucy’s situation; short flashbacks fill in her past. We follow her for one year. Where will she be at year’s end? Where will the host family be?
Themes encompass life in a land foreign to what one is accustomed to, the breaking off of ties from family and kin, self-discovery and sexual awakening. It is a book about growing into your own skin, finding out who you are and deciding who you want to become. It is about family relationships and how teenagers view their parents. It is also about marital relationships and friendship.
We all have extremely different lives, but the book provides common ground for women to relate to, regardless of age, station in life and cultural ties. How do you feel about your mother? Are you not torn between love and hate? How do you feel about parents wanting to model your life after theirs? How do women feel about their fathers and how does this affect how we feel about men in general? These are the issues touched upon. It is not a book solely for or about teenagers!
Relationships and cultural ties are the book’s focus. If you are looking for a fast-moving, plot-oriented story, this isn’t for you. If you enjoy books that make you think, it is.
It’s a book oriented toward women, but I love ’s books and they’re oriented toward men, so logically, men ought to be able to appreciate ’s writing too.
The audiobook narration is fantastic. I am beginning to think that Robin Miles is the best narrator around. Any book that she reads, she reads well. Her intonation of Caribbean nationals is superb. The speed with which she reads the story is perfect. Her narration I have given five stars.
**
4 stars
4 stars
3 stars
3 stars
1 star
1 star
I love Գ’s writing. It is expressive. It captures wonderfully how people feel and think. It is thought provoking.
I will give you a few quotes that spoke to ME:
“Everybody 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. When they are not sure what to do, they consult this guide. If the guide gives them advice they don't like, they change the guide.�
“I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.�
“She had too much of everything, and so she longed to have less; less, she was sure, would bring her happiness. To me it was a laugh and a relief to observe the unhappiness that too much can bring; I had been so used to observing the results of too little.�
I also suggest you read through the author quotes here: /quotes/sear...
They range from contemplative to humorous to wise.
The story has autobiographical elements, but it is fiction. A nineteen-year-old girl from the West Indies, Lucy, is sent as an au pair to America. She has employment for one year and is to care for four young girls of a well-off, good-looking couple. We follow Lucy’s situation; short flashbacks fill in her past. We follow her for one year. Where will she be at year’s end? Where will the host family be?
Themes encompass life in a land foreign to what one is accustomed to, the breaking off of ties from family and kin, self-discovery and sexual awakening. It is a book about growing into your own skin, finding out who you are and deciding who you want to become. It is about family relationships and how teenagers view their parents. It is also about marital relationships and friendship.
We all have extremely different lives, but the book provides common ground for women to relate to, regardless of age, station in life and cultural ties. How do you feel about your mother? Are you not torn between love and hate? How do you feel about parents wanting to model your life after theirs? How do women feel about their fathers and how does this affect how we feel about men in general? These are the issues touched upon. It is not a book solely for or about teenagers!
Relationships and cultural ties are the book’s focus. If you are looking for a fast-moving, plot-oriented story, this isn’t for you. If you enjoy books that make you think, it is.
It’s a book oriented toward women, but I love ’s books and they’re oriented toward men, so logically, men ought to be able to appreciate ’s writing too.
The audiobook narration is fantastic. I am beginning to think that Robin Miles is the best narrator around. Any book that she reads, she reads well. Her intonation of Caribbean nationals is superb. The speed with which she reads the story is perfect. Her narration I have given five stars.
**
4 stars
4 stars
3 stars
3 stars
1 star
1 star
September 8, 2016
*Rereading this book. First time I read it was in 2013 for a class, now I'm rereading for another class for the exact same professor. Clearly she adores this book. Hoping I get more out of it this time.
Update: I got nothing new out of it the second time around. I just don't care about Lucy. Her character doesn't make sense to me and her story frustrates me in ways that I don't find very productive. Not to mention the fact that I hate the ending and the way it just drops off without a real conclusion, in my opinion. Clearly this story is super not for me.
Update: I got nothing new out of it the second time around. I just don't care about Lucy. Her character doesn't make sense to me and her story frustrates me in ways that I don't find very productive. Not to mention the fact that I hate the ending and the way it just drops off without a real conclusion, in my opinion. Clearly this story is super not for me.
Read
May 7, 2023Lucy felt deeply personal. From the events of the story, to the language, the narrative almost felt like reading a diary. While Jamaica Kincaid examines what feels like every theme imaginable (colonialism, imperialism, racism, gender, sexuality, identity), the main part of the book that stuck out to me was the emphasis on Lucy’s intelligence. Her intellect seemed to be central to her growth and her identity, and it not only had an impact on how she determined her future, but it also largely impacted her past, where we see glimpses of a strained relationship with her mother. Lucy’s resentment towards her mother seemed to stem from her mother’s doubt in her, and her mother’s downplaying and almost suppression of her intellectual abilities. She discouraged Lucy from going to school, she even pulled her out of school. She wanted Lucy to be a nurse and not a scholar. Lucy’s mother took pride in Lucy’s brothers potentially being college graduates, but she ignored Lucy’s desire and potential to do the same, which made Lucy extremely upset: “I felt a sword go through my heart, for there was no accompanying scenario in which she saw me, her only identical offspring, in a remotely similar situation. To myself I then began to call her Mrs. Judas, and I began to plan a separation from her that even then I suspected would never be complete� (124). Lucy implies that her mother only sees her as an extension of herself, and therefore only capable of what the mother wants. But throughout the book, we see Lucy deviate from every expectation she has of her, and her pursuing her intellectual abilities is a direct rebellion against her mother’s wishes. “I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence� (127). In an attempt to free herself from her mother’s expectations, find independence, and build her own identity, Lucy not only physically distances herself by going to the United States and refusing to read her mother’s letters, but she also refuses to pursue the career her mother wanted for her. Lucy remains closely academic, reading, and going to night classes while she is an au pair, continuing to strengthen the intellectual abilities her mother refused to acknowledge in her. Despite having so much resentment towards her mother, Lucy thinks of her often and reflects on how her present actions in the USA would be perceived back with her family in the West Indies: “For a very long moment, I wondered what my mother was doing just then, and I saw her face; it was the face that she used to have when she loved me without reservation� (148). With her past being largely influential over all aspects of her life, present and future included, Lucy’s inability to completely let go of her mother makes sense. As long as she is straying from her mother and as long as rebellion against her mother drives Lucy’s independence, it seems that her mother will always be connected to her in some way.
June 30, 2019
I loved reading Lucy so much that it makes me want to go back and read Jamaica Kincaid's all over again because I think I'm "ready," now, for this writer's particular voice.
February 6, 2017
This is a fantastic novel. While I understand that its writing, considered on its own, may not wow everyone, the subject matter/ social commentary was superbly handled.
On writing: I read this slim novel slowly, taking the time to do what I very rarely do - reread every second paragraph or so to appreciate its structure. The book is written in first-person narrative throughout, and external events do not get in the way of the plot, which is Lucy's gradual emotional separation from her family back in the West Indies. Not only family, though; Lucy examines what she learned back home, and sifts the views she considers worth keeping in her new situation (men are not to be trusted, a woman must be financially independent) from the ones she finds painfully unjust and restrictive (a girl must never hope to be educated for a profession that is not feminized, like a nurse, or be sexually liberated - bear in mind that the novel is set in 1968 or 1969). The external events are just a backdrop to the change that slowly occurs in Lucy, whose leaving her island for the United States to work as an au pair was a very conscious step to leaving her old self behind.
Many people commented on postcolonial themes in the novel; Lucy is very aware of her heritage, but her attitude towards the whites is not only political ("(...) thank God I didn't have to do that", she says, when her employer shows her freshly-plowed fields), but, on some fundamental level, also esthetical:
I cannot help envisaging Mariah, the wife of the family that employs Lucy in the book, other than a Gwyneth Paltrow lookalike � feeding her children “muffins (�) made from specially purchased ingredients, and bacon and eggs from what could only have been specially cared for pigs and hens�, celebrating her marriage by placing family pictures everywhere around the house, begging her husband to “avoid pesticides and find a natural antidote� to bugs, tired of having too much of everything. Mariah’s idea of a nice gift is an artisanal fair-trade necklace from Africa; her response to Lucy sharing how her mother changed after giving birth to second, third, fourth child is to give her The Second Sex to read. Mariah’s way of reacting to setbacks is typically upper-middle class, too, in a way that feels very familiar: in order to stop the destruction of countryside in the area where her family owns a summer house, she decides to write and illustrate a book on endangered plants and animals, “and give any money made to an organization devoted to saving them� (tellingly, she never seems to go past the phase of taking sketches). And Lucy, who is sharp, perhaps a little sharper than my sharpest students her age, thinks:
On writing: I read this slim novel slowly, taking the time to do what I very rarely do - reread every second paragraph or so to appreciate its structure. The book is written in first-person narrative throughout, and external events do not get in the way of the plot, which is Lucy's gradual emotional separation from her family back in the West Indies. Not only family, though; Lucy examines what she learned back home, and sifts the views she considers worth keeping in her new situation (men are not to be trusted, a woman must be financially independent) from the ones she finds painfully unjust and restrictive (a girl must never hope to be educated for a profession that is not feminized, like a nurse, or be sexually liberated - bear in mind that the novel is set in 1968 or 1969). The external events are just a backdrop to the change that slowly occurs in Lucy, whose leaving her island for the United States to work as an au pair was a very conscious step to leaving her old self behind.
Many people commented on postcolonial themes in the novel; Lucy is very aware of her heritage, but her attitude towards the whites is not only political ("(...) thank God I didn't have to do that", she says, when her employer shows her freshly-plowed fields), but, on some fundamental level, also esthetical:
I disliked the descendants of the Britons for being unbeautiful, for not cooking food well, for wearing ugly clothes, for not liking to really dance, and for not liking real music. If only we had been ruled by the French (...)I loved Kincaid's handling of the theme of white, middle-class privilege, and had many moments throughout the book when I felt YES IT IS LIKE THAT EXACTLY, wondering how little has changed over the nearly 30 years since the publication (or maybe Polish middle class simply reached the level of American middle class of late 1960s as described by the author in 1990).
I cannot help envisaging Mariah, the wife of the family that employs Lucy in the book, other than a Gwyneth Paltrow lookalike � feeding her children “muffins (�) made from specially purchased ingredients, and bacon and eggs from what could only have been specially cared for pigs and hens�, celebrating her marriage by placing family pictures everywhere around the house, begging her husband to “avoid pesticides and find a natural antidote� to bugs, tired of having too much of everything. Mariah’s idea of a nice gift is an artisanal fair-trade necklace from Africa; her response to Lucy sharing how her mother changed after giving birth to second, third, fourth child is to give her The Second Sex to read. Mariah’s way of reacting to setbacks is typically upper-middle class, too, in a way that feels very familiar: in order to stop the destruction of countryside in the area where her family owns a summer house, she decides to write and illustrate a book on endangered plants and animals, “and give any money made to an organization devoted to saving them� (tellingly, she never seems to go past the phase of taking sketches). And Lucy, who is sharp, perhaps a little sharper than my sharpest students her age, thinks:
I couldn’t bring myself to point out to her that if all the things she wanted to save in the world were saved, she might find herself in reduced circumstances; I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to examine [her husband’s] daily conversations with his stockbroker, to see if they bore any relation to the things she saw passing away forever before her eyes.Lucy’s mother, the woman Lucy leaves behind, is an intense woman, difficult and fascinating. On Lucy getting her first period,
she laughed and laughed. It was a kind laugh, a reassuring laugh. And then she said that finding blood in my underpants might be something one day I would get down on my knees and pray for.The same woman tells Lucy she named her “after Satan himself. Lucy, short for Lucifer�, which surprisingly makes her daughter go “from feeling burdened and old and tired to feeling light, new, clean. I was transformed from failure to triumph. It was the moment I knew who I was.� Lucy’s mother � who, as we get to realize, was hurt by Lucy many times - is capable of uncompromising love, telling her loving-hating daughter she will love her, despite everything, until the end of her life. I definitely want to read this book again, perhaps even teach it (references to casual sex and drug use are not detailed and do serve a purpose).
June 2, 2017
This was a strange but interesting book.
It is supposed to be the coming-of-age story of Lucy, a 19 year old girl from Antigua who comes to the US as an au pair. Lucy herself is very judgemental of the family that she works for and despite them (especially the mother) being very kind to her she doesn't treat them with much regard.
Lucy's character was actually kind of the biggest problem I had with this book. I find her extremely unlikeable. As I mentioned, she behaves very strangely to everyone she meets - not only the family she works for but also her own. Her mother sends her countless letters while she is away but she doesn't reply to a single one - supposedly because it would make her miss her mother so much, but I just couldn't buy into that. Especially after she then goes on complaining about her for the rest of the book. Lucy somehow views herself above others it would seem and kind of looks with scorn and condescension on other people's actions, thoughts and feelings.
If a character is going to be like that - fine, but I would at least like some back ground as to... why, I guess. I understand not every bad person has a reason for being bad, but specifically in this case - we barely learn anything about her life in Antigua and if, then it's told in such a detached way it doesn't appear to have influenced her at all.
Actually, this is true for most of the book - I felt so detached reading it, as if I was IN Lucy's mind listening to her commentary on a movie only she was watching.
Also, as part of a coming-of-age story one is typically supposed to do some growing up - I didn't feel like that was the case with Lucy at all, mainly because there was no before-after comparison. There was no distinction between Lucy, the child and Lucy, the adult. It's alluded to in the blurb that Lucy discovers her sexuality during her time as an au pair, but then in the book she recounts sexual events that happened while she was still in Antigua which left me quite confused. She then goes on to sleep with about a million men which in itself doesn't bother me but it just seemed so random and I guess was supposed to represent this purported "discovery of her sexuality".
Overall I did enjoy reading this book because it provided an interesting perspective, but Lucy as a person just didn't make much sense to me. I would have also liked to feel a little more emotionally invested in her story, but she made that quite impossible by retelling it in a tone that made it seem as if it had nothing to do with herself at all.
It is supposed to be the coming-of-age story of Lucy, a 19 year old girl from Antigua who comes to the US as an au pair. Lucy herself is very judgemental of the family that she works for and despite them (especially the mother) being very kind to her she doesn't treat them with much regard.
Lucy's character was actually kind of the biggest problem I had with this book. I find her extremely unlikeable. As I mentioned, she behaves very strangely to everyone she meets - not only the family she works for but also her own. Her mother sends her countless letters while she is away but she doesn't reply to a single one - supposedly because it would make her miss her mother so much, but I just couldn't buy into that. Especially after she then goes on complaining about her for the rest of the book. Lucy somehow views herself above others it would seem and kind of looks with scorn and condescension on other people's actions, thoughts and feelings.
If a character is going to be like that - fine, but I would at least like some back ground as to... why, I guess. I understand not every bad person has a reason for being bad, but specifically in this case - we barely learn anything about her life in Antigua and if, then it's told in such a detached way it doesn't appear to have influenced her at all.
Actually, this is true for most of the book - I felt so detached reading it, as if I was IN Lucy's mind listening to her commentary on a movie only she was watching.
Also, as part of a coming-of-age story one is typically supposed to do some growing up - I didn't feel like that was the case with Lucy at all, mainly because there was no before-after comparison. There was no distinction between Lucy, the child and Lucy, the adult. It's alluded to in the blurb that Lucy discovers her sexuality during her time as an au pair, but then in the book she recounts sexual events that happened while she was still in Antigua which left me quite confused. She then goes on to sleep with about a million men which in itself doesn't bother me but it just seemed so random and I guess was supposed to represent this purported "discovery of her sexuality".
Overall I did enjoy reading this book because it provided an interesting perspective, but Lucy as a person just didn't make much sense to me. I would have also liked to feel a little more emotionally invested in her story, but she made that quite impossible by retelling it in a tone that made it seem as if it had nothing to do with herself at all.
March 10, 2024
new feminine rage book just dropped (in 1990)
October 5, 2024
Jamaica Գ’s novel Lucy tells the story of Lucy Potter, a 19-year-old woman who moves from her native Antigua to the United States to be an au pair for a well-off white family. The family is composed of a couple, Mariah and Lewis, and their four children. Lucy grows close to Mariah, who becomes a mother figure to her. The affection Lucy feels for Mariah contrasts with the deep conflict Lucy feels when she thinks of her real mother back home. The story of Lucy’s first year in the U.S. is interspersed with memories of her childhood in Antigua, especially of her love-hate relationship with her mother. Lucy’s mother sends her many letters during her stay with the family, but they remain unopened as Lucy refuses to read them. With a powerful mix of pride, contempt, and sorrow, Lucy is determined to forge her own path.
Written in a style that is deceptively simple and may even seem naïve, Lucy is actually so layered with meaning that I read it twice. Between those readings, I read another book, but Գ’s invisible hand had gripped me and kept drawing me back.
Lucy is an act of protest. It is an exploration of a woman’s rage at feeling confined by family ties, especially her desire to free herself from her mother’s influence. Anger about European colonization is another important theme in this novel. The most striking example of this occurs one day when Mariah blindfolds Lucy and takes her to see a field of daffodils as a surprise. Lucy has a violent reaction to the daffodils because they remind her how, as a schoolgirl in Antigua, she was made to memorize an old English poem about daffodils, although they were not part of the island’s natural flora:
“I did not know what these flowers were, and so it was a mystery to me why I wanted to kill them. Just like that. I wanted to kill them. I wished that I had an enormous scythe; I would just walk down the path, dragging it alongside me, and I would cut these flowers down at the place where they emerged from the ground.� (p. 29)
It takes courage to write an unlikeable protagonist, especially an unlikeable female protagonist. There is so much pressure on girls and women to be likeable all the time, and not show anger or be disagreeable. The protagonists of both Annie John and Lucy break free from this mold: they are wonderfully disagreeable, angry, and yes, unlikeable. I feel grateful to Jamaica Kincaid for writing female characters who dare to displease.
It may seem cruel that Lucy ignores her mother’s letters, but I can understand her burning need to create a new life for herself, one that is truly hers and not her mother’s. Some mothers consider their daughters an extension of themselves, thus curtailing their independence and ultimately diminishing their lives. This sentiment is stated both explicitly and implicitly throughout Lucy:
“I had come to feel that my mother’s love for me was designed solely to make me into an echo of her; and I didn’t know why, but I felt that I would rather be dead than become just an echo of someone. . . . Those thoughts would have come as a complete surprise to my mother, for in her life she had found that her ways were the best ways to have, and she would have been mystified as to how someone who came from inside her would want to be anyone different from her.� (p. 36)
Eventually, in adulthood, daughters who find themselves in this situation have to cut the psychological umbilical cord in order to thrive as individuals. In doing so, we are telling our mothers: I am a separate person with values and desires that are different from yours. You may have given birth to me and raised me, but you do not own my body, my life, or my choices.
At the end of the novel, Lucy is lonely and unmoored. She has nothing, but she is the author of her own destiny. It is the only thing she has ever wanted.
October 16, 2020
У роману „Луси�, пратимо прве дане младе девојке која долази у САД са неименованог карипског острва како би остварила свој „амерички сан�. Она је веома огорчена на своју породицу, на живот на родном, скученом острву, те пресељење у САД види као једино решење. По доласку у САД ради као дадиља код једног богаташког брачног пара, који (само наизглед) живи срећно, као из бајке. Убрзо ће схватити да ни живот овде није много дарежљивији, али пошто пратимо само прву годину њеног боравка, нећемо испратити да ли се амерички сан, можда, остварио. Оно што ми је остало недоречено јесте због чега је та млада девојка толико огорчена на своју породицу и због чега жели да раскине апсолутно све везе са њима (или ми само све изречено у књизи не делује као довољан разлог).
Џамејка Кинкејд је списатељица са Антигве, која од својих тинејџерских година живи у САД. Доста се о њој причало последњих дана/недеља, као озбиљном кандидату за Нобелову награду, пошто, поред неспорних књижевних квалитета поседује и друге, који су у данашњем политички-коректном свету на цени (Црнкиња, из „мале� земље, која се бави проблемима „обесправљених� социјалних групација).
Занемарујући ове паракњижевне ствари, Кинкејд заиста пише упечатљиво, живо, али без икаквих сувишних украса. Једноставним реченицама обликује унутрашњи свет своје јунакиње (у коју је уткано сигурно и пуно аутобиографског) тако да ликови делују веома реалистично. Препорука.
Џамејка Кинкејд је списатељица са Антигве, која од својих тинејџерских година живи у САД. Доста се о њој причало последњих дана/недеља, као озбиљном кандидату за Нобелову награду, пошто, поред неспорних књижевних квалитета поседује и друге, који су у данашњем политички-коректном свету на цени (Црнкиња, из „мале� земље, која се бави проблемима „обесправљених� социјалних групација).
Занемарујући ове паракњижевне ствари, Кинкејд заиста пише упечатљиво, живо, али без икаквих сувишних украса. Једноставним реченицама обликује унутрашњи свет своје јунакиње (у коју је уткано сигурно и пуно аутобиографског) тако да ликови делују веома реалистично. Препорука.
June 15, 2020
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.
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.
March 30, 2025
I loved this book. I thought it a great balance of humorous and poignant. telling the story of a young woman Lucy, her desires/ambitions and her experiences - leaving the West Indies for America (I could also picture it as the UK while I was reading)... work, sexuality, friendships... the process of attaining her goals, and how she feels when she has �
it's told with the apparent simplicity and unembellished frankness of a late teen 🙂😃 yet very adeptly and cleverly done 😁😊
some things were at once brilliantly, and both subtly and strikingly described, especially the legacy of colonialism - wishing she came from somewhere noone wanted to visit, the exoticisation of her homeland 💔�
there was alot more besides, more layers and facets, but I didn't take notes, and simply enjoyed the read 😊
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
accessed as a library audiobook, nicely read by Robin Miles 😊
it's told with the apparent simplicity and unembellished frankness of a late teen 🙂😃 yet very adeptly and cleverly done 😁😊
some things were at once brilliantly, and both subtly and strikingly described, especially the legacy of colonialism - wishing she came from somewhere noone wanted to visit, the exoticisation of her homeland 💔�
there was alot more besides, more layers and facets, but I didn't take notes, and simply enjoyed the read 😊
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
accessed as a library audiobook, nicely read by Robin Miles 😊
December 4, 2023
a truly nuanced and powerful female rage story!
inspired by 's own experiences, tells the story of a nineteen year old girl from the west indies, who travels to the united states to work as an au pair for a rich white family.
though essentially a novella, packs enough depth into this book that it could be a full novel (and then some). in some ways, stands amongst other immigration tales, chronicling a character’s complex experience of their first time away from their homeland. it soon becomes clear that lucy is very angry, and understandably so - she’s a young woman from a colonised country who simultaneously loves and hates where she comes from, who never wants to return but yet battles with intense homesickness.
the most prominent, and also powerful, aspect of the novel is undoubtedly lucy’s complicated relationship with her mother. lucy is full of frustrations at her mother: for falling into the stereotypical role of a mother and wife; for raising lucy, her only daughter, to be a docile woman, just like the generations of women before her. she’s frustrated that her mother didn’t want more for herself and more for lucy, she’s frustrated at the world for not allowing women to be, and want, more.
lucy feels that she must break away from her mother to be a fully independent adult, yet she also believes she’ll never again know the kind of love she shared with her mother.
some of my favourite quotes:
“i had come to feel that my mother’s love for me was designed solely to make me into an echo of her; and i didn’t know why, but i felt that i would rather be dead than become just an echo of someone.�
“oh, it was a laugh, for i had spent so much time saying i did not want to be like my mother that i missed the whole story: i was not like my mother� i was my mother. And i could see now why, to the few feeble attempts i made to draw a line between us, her reply always was "you can run away, but you cannot escape the fact that i am your mother, my blood runs in you, i carried you for nine months inside me." how else was i to take such a statement but as a sentence for life in a prison whose bars were stronger than any iron imaginable?�
"you are a very angry person, aren't you?" and her voice was filled with alarm and pity. perhaps i should have said something reassuring; perhaps i should have denied it. but i did not. i said, “of course i am. what do you expect?"
rating: 4.5
inspired by 's own experiences, tells the story of a nineteen year old girl from the west indies, who travels to the united states to work as an au pair for a rich white family.
though essentially a novella, packs enough depth into this book that it could be a full novel (and then some). in some ways, stands amongst other immigration tales, chronicling a character’s complex experience of their first time away from their homeland. it soon becomes clear that lucy is very angry, and understandably so - she’s a young woman from a colonised country who simultaneously loves and hates where she comes from, who never wants to return but yet battles with intense homesickness.
the most prominent, and also powerful, aspect of the novel is undoubtedly lucy’s complicated relationship with her mother. lucy is full of frustrations at her mother: for falling into the stereotypical role of a mother and wife; for raising lucy, her only daughter, to be a docile woman, just like the generations of women before her. she’s frustrated that her mother didn’t want more for herself and more for lucy, she’s frustrated at the world for not allowing women to be, and want, more.
lucy feels that she must break away from her mother to be a fully independent adult, yet she also believes she’ll never again know the kind of love she shared with her mother.
some of my favourite quotes:
“i had come to feel that my mother’s love for me was designed solely to make me into an echo of her; and i didn’t know why, but i felt that i would rather be dead than become just an echo of someone.�
“oh, it was a laugh, for i had spent so much time saying i did not want to be like my mother that i missed the whole story: i was not like my mother� i was my mother. And i could see now why, to the few feeble attempts i made to draw a line between us, her reply always was "you can run away, but you cannot escape the fact that i am your mother, my blood runs in you, i carried you for nine months inside me." how else was i to take such a statement but as a sentence for life in a prison whose bars were stronger than any iron imaginable?�
"you are a very angry person, aren't you?" and her voice was filled with alarm and pity. perhaps i should have said something reassuring; perhaps i should have denied it. but i did not. i said, “of course i am. what do you expect?"
rating: 4.5
July 30, 2012
An engaging, uplifting, and disturbing tale about a West Indian girl of 19 who escapes an oppressive, impoverished family situation to become a nanny for a wealthy urban family in an unspecified northern city in America. She loves the children and befriends the mother. Despite the clash of culture and class and the potential to be taken advantage of, she maintains her sense of integrity and independence and transmutes her anger into sarcasm and fantasy. This is not the typical coming of age story or chronicle of the immigant experience. Her explorations of sex are loveless and founded on her past experience that men are inherently untrustworthy. She seems to be headed down a path toward cold hearted, self-centeredness, yet events toward the end of the book point to the likelihood she will turn out just fine.
January 30, 2014
A powerful and taut read. I'm surprised to see a lot of people didn't like Lucy because she was "so angry." I found her a very poignant character. In a sense, I think she is an unreliable narrator, she is clearly angry--and has good reason to be. She is also really hard on herself, but we the reader should be able to read between the lines. She demonstrates that she has very intense feelings--and aren't love and hate two sides of the same coin? Kincaid manages to explore many themes here with brevity but also with great depth in a very original way. I have read many novels on the theme of the immigrant experience and post-colonialism, but "Lucy" has added something new to my understanding. Kincaid is unapologetic but doesn't come off as preachy or one-sided. Lucy deserves its reputation as a classic--many of its moments will stay with me for a long time.
December 13, 2022
I wish I could have given this a 0 star review. The main character is probably one of the most hypocritical characters I’ve ever read in my life. Getting mad at her at her mom for raising her not to end up a “slut� then saying she loves it & is with a man who had many affairs BUT condemns another women for sleeping with a married man? So it’s okay if she does it but not someone else?
February 5, 2022
Another wonderful book by Jamaica Kincaid. I like the way she captures her characters and their intensity of feeling. Once again, Robin Miles' reading is superb.
February 9, 2021
Though I read Caribbean-American author Jamaica Kincaid a long time before encountering the Italian author Elena Ferrante, reading Lucy made me aware of a similarity in their characters, in their holding nothing back, allowing even the darkest thoughts to arise, unfiltered stream of consciousness narratives of moments that challenge the reader. They are confronting in their truth-telling and demand to be read beyond the surface.
There is no alluding to, there is cold, hard, observant reality and with Lucy’s arrival to a new country, there is the stark contrast of perspectives between her and those she encounters, that speak to their historical context and how they continue to play out in the present.
Her novel is one of my all time favourite reads, my outstanding read of 2015.
Lucy is a 19 year old woman who has left her home in the West Indies and come to America to be an au pair for a family of four young children. The book is set over one year, her experience as a new, young immigrant.
It is both an escape and an adventure for Lucy, to have left everything behind and to strike out on her own independently; she reinforces that feeling in her refusal to open weekly letters from her mother. She does however often occupy her thoughts, moving between anger, resentment, longing and regret.
Lucy quickly develops a close relationship with Mariah reinforcing the complexity of the mother-daughter bond.
She is surprised when she experiences homesickness for the first time.
Having never understood and had impatience for characters in books who yearn for home, she discovers a rising and unwelcome longing for all she had willingly left behind. Though her words of home and family are often bitter, she experiences a reluctant and surprising feeling of loss.
She replaces the discontent of life in her home and country, with a new melancholy, as she discovers what it feels like to be an outsider, an immigrant.
A Daffodil Isn’t Always A Symbol of Joy
One morning Mariah speaks to her of the arrival of spring, of how it made her feel glad to be alive.
Lucy thought:
She recalls being forced to memorise and recite a poem when she was ten years old (at Queen Victoria Girl’s School), the praise she’d received afterwards and the nightmare of being chased by daffodils she’d had that evening.
She recounts the dream memory in anger to Mariah. In a park a few days later they come across a swathe of flowers under a tree that Lucy doesn’t recognise but is filled with the desire to crush and kill.
The flowers represent the disconnect between them, the presentation of something as beautiful that recalls the deep-seated, long reaching tentacles of imperial injustice, and Mariah’s colonial-like suggestion, further pressing Lucy to see the world as she does. Lucy reminds Mariah of her humiliating experience, the long poem about flowers she would not see in real life until she was nineteen, and feels guilty in her response.
A Clash of Cultures � Our Circumstances Develop Our Perceptions
Though the family provide her comfortable means to enter this new world, she mock-marvels at how these people came to be the way are, noticing and judging the way they act, the things they say, seeing their similarity to all humanity (in her experience), observing the naivety of privilege, in thinking they might be exempt from certain tragic situations, expressing shock at circumstances Lucy considers normal.
It is a year that changes her further, as she comes to know this new country, makes a new friend or two and begins to see herself as the woman other people see and pursues that self to meet a kind of aloof desire.
Kincaid's biting prose is sublime, never what you expect, she delights in the unfiltered version of humanity and delivers many poignant and ironic insights along the way.
Excellent.
There is no alluding to, there is cold, hard, observant reality and with Lucy’s arrival to a new country, there is the stark contrast of perspectives between her and those she encounters, that speak to their historical context and how they continue to play out in the present.
Her novel is one of my all time favourite reads, my outstanding read of 2015.
Lucy is a 19 year old woman who has left her home in the West Indies and come to America to be an au pair for a family of four young children. The book is set over one year, her experience as a new, young immigrant.
It is both an escape and an adventure for Lucy, to have left everything behind and to strike out on her own independently; she reinforces that feeling in her refusal to open weekly letters from her mother. She does however often occupy her thoughts, moving between anger, resentment, longing and regret.
Lucy quickly develops a close relationship with Mariah reinforcing the complexity of the mother-daughter bond.
The times I loved Mariah it was because she reminded me of my mother. The times that I did not love Mariah it was because she reminded me of my mother.
She is surprised when she experiences homesickness for the first time.
I did not know that the sun could shine and the air remain cold; no one had ever told me. What a feeling that was! How can I explain? Something I had always known � the way I knew my skin was the colour brown of a nut rubbed repeatedly with a soft cloth, or the way I knew my own name � something I took completely for granted, “the sun is shining, the air is warm,� was not so.
Having never understood and had impatience for characters in books who yearn for home, she discovers a rising and unwelcome longing for all she had willingly left behind. Though her words of home and family are often bitter, she experiences a reluctant and surprising feeling of loss.
Oh, I had imagined that with my one swift act � leaving home and coming to this new place � I could leave behind me, as if it were an old garment never to be worn again, my sad thoughts, my sad feelings, and my discontent with life in general as it presented itself to me.
She replaces the discontent of life in her home and country, with a new melancholy, as she discovers what it feels like to be an outsider, an immigrant.
A Daffodil Isn’t Always A Symbol of Joy
One morning Mariah speaks to her of the arrival of spring, of how it made her feel glad to be alive.
She said the word “spring� as if spring were a close friend, a friend who dared to go away for a long time and would soon appear for their passionate reunion. She said “Have you ever seen daffodils pushing their way up out of the ground?
Lucy thought:
So Mariah is made to feel alive by some flowers bending in the breeze. How does a person get to be that way?
She recalls being forced to memorise and recite a poem when she was ten years old (at Queen Victoria Girl’s School), the praise she’d received afterwards and the nightmare of being chased by daffodils she’d had that evening.
I was then at the height of my two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another; outside false, inside true. And so I made pleasant little noises that showed both modesty and appreciation, but inside I was making a vow to erase from my mind, line by line, every word of that poem.
She recounts the dream memory in anger to Mariah. In a park a few days later they come across a swathe of flowers under a tree that Lucy doesn’t recognise but is filled with the desire to crush and kill.
Mariah said, “These are daffodils. I’m sorry about the poem, but I’m hoping you’ll find them lovely all the same.�
The flowers represent the disconnect between them, the presentation of something as beautiful that recalls the deep-seated, long reaching tentacles of imperial injustice, and Mariah’s colonial-like suggestion, further pressing Lucy to see the world as she does. Lucy reminds Mariah of her humiliating experience, the long poem about flowers she would not see in real life until she was nineteen, and feels guilty in her response.
I felt sorry that I had cast her beloved daffodils in a scene she had never considered, a scene of conquered and conquests; a scene of brutes masquerading as angels and angels portrayed as brutes…It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t my fault. But nothing could change the fact that where she saw beautiful flowers I saw sorrow and bitterness. The same thing could cause us to shed tears, but those tears would not taste the same.
A Clash of Cultures � Our Circumstances Develop Our Perceptions
Though the family provide her comfortable means to enter this new world, she mock-marvels at how these people came to be the way are, noticing and judging the way they act, the things they say, seeing their similarity to all humanity (in her experience), observing the naivety of privilege, in thinking they might be exempt from certain tragic situations, expressing shock at circumstances Lucy considers normal.
It is a year that changes her further, as she comes to know this new country, makes a new friend or two and begins to see herself as the woman other people see and pursues that self to meet a kind of aloof desire.
Kincaid's biting prose is sublime, never what you expect, she delights in the unfiltered version of humanity and delivers many poignant and ironic insights along the way.
Excellent.
March 17, 2025
Lucy is raging and grieving the one true love she’s ever known: her mother. Themes of the power of a name, colonialism, gender, and class.
This felt like a sequel to Annie John in the best way possible.
This felt like a sequel to Annie John in the best way possible.
July 10, 2020
Lucy är runt 19 när hon lämnar familjen på en ö i Karibien och reser till New York för att arbeta som barnflicka åt en välbeställd familj. Det känns som sent 60-tal. Samtidigt som hon försöker frigöra sig från sin mamma, skapar hon nya snarlika band med mamman i värdfamiljen. Lucy både hatar och älskar henne, precis som hon hatar och älskar sin egen mamma.
Lucy har en skarp blick på mänskliga beteenden och hon märker att människor är likadana, oavsett vilka samhällsklasser eller länder de kommer från. Hon har sett dem alla.
Det här är en kortroman med fylligt innehåll som tar upp ämnen som klass, rasism, kvinnlig frigörelse, sexualitet och det ibland komplicerade förhållandet mellan mor och dotter.
Och visst påminner det stilistiska om Ferrante?
Jag tyckte om Lucy. Både personen och romanen, och kommer läsa mer av Jamaica Kincaid i framtiden.
Lucy har en skarp blick på mänskliga beteenden och hon märker att människor är likadana, oavsett vilka samhällsklasser eller länder de kommer från. Hon har sett dem alla.
Det här är en kortroman med fylligt innehåll som tar upp ämnen som klass, rasism, kvinnlig frigörelse, sexualitet och det ibland komplicerade förhållandet mellan mor och dotter.
Och visst påminner det stilistiska om Ferrante?
Jag tyckte om Lucy. Både personen och romanen, och kommer läsa mer av Jamaica Kincaid i framtiden.
March 2, 2022
“Oh, it was a laugh, for I had spent so much time saying I did not want to be like my mother that I missed the whole story: I was not like my mother—I was my mother. And I could see now why, to the few feeble attempts I made to draw a line between us, her reply always was “You can run away, but you cannot escape the fact that I am your mother, my blood runs in you, I carried you for nine months inside me.� How else was I to take such a statement but as a sentence for life in a prison whose bars were stronger than any iron imaginable? �
“The stories of the fallen were well known to me, but I had not known that my own situation could even distantly be related to them. Lucy, a girl’s name for Lucifer. That my mother would have found me devil-like did not surprise me, for I often thought of her as god-like, and are not the children of gods devils? I did not grow to like the name Lucy—I would have much preferred to be called Lucifer outright—but whenever I saw my name I always reached out to give it a strong embrace.�
Excerpt From Lucy: A Novel by Kincaid, Jamaica
This material may be protected by copyright.
What does it mean to leave everyone you know and go and find your own way? Lucy is observant and thoughtful and sees through so much placed in front of her.
We’re tied to our parents in such unique and distinct ways that it almost feels like a tearing to forge your own path, but it must be done.
I loved this novel. The story was distinct and direct. Lucy pulled no punches when it came to her thoughts about everything around her, even when disturbing. Jamaica Գ’s musings were both revealing and soul-stirring.
May 6, 2009
this novel moved me in so many ways i cannot even begin to explain it in enough words. first of all it's about a young caribbean woman from antigua who is 19 years old. she moves to the states to work for a wealthy white family. now although new york city is never mentioned as the setting, it is clear that the novel takes place in nyc. the descriptions of the city with all of its beauty and ugliness are riveting and forces one to take a deeper look at him/herself. in many ways this novel is a stream of consciousness, told in the first-person narrative. lucy the au pair from antigua tells the story, although her actual name isn't mentioned until the final pages of the book. i loved this novel! intensely poetic and hauntingly beautiful all at once. a must read for anyone interested in caribbean literature, postcolonial literature and feminism. ahhhhh. still smiling from the wonder, mystery and power of this novel...
April 26, 2014
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 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.
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 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.
August 2, 2017
"Lucy" is a quick read and was wonderfully written. I have come to really enjoy Jamaica Kincaid's style of writing. It is clean and simple yet laden with deep meaning. Lucy- the protagonist of the novel was a sorrowful, bitter person and I blame her abandoned upbringing and the love-hate relationship she had with her mother as the cause. The novel in general was full of misery- not only from the protagonist, but also from the family Lucy was working for (Mariah and Lewis). Even after Lucy obtained all the things she longed for - freedom to do as she pleased, to be away from home (the Caribbean) etc, she still wasn't fully satisfied with life. The bond she formed with her friend Peggy and her romantic relationships with men didn't seem completely sincere in love. There was a deep void in Lucy's life and I believe only her mother's love could fill it. Her mother was however quite controlling and hostile towards Lucy as a child. What kind of mother tells her daughter that she was named after Satan because she was a botheration from the moment she was conceived? And that Lucy was the girl's name for Lucifer? Crazy.
This novel could be seen as a sequel to Jamaica Kincaid's novel, "Annie John". There are a lot of similarities in the two stories. Kincaid seems to enjoy writing on mother-daughter relationships in these two novels... and they are both quite tragic! Kincaid's ability to articulate emotions and feelings of joy, vulnerability, sorrow, pain, grief are very palpable in her novels. This is why I love her books and I highly recommend this one!
April 30, 2018
Isn't it the most blissful thing I the world to be away from everything you have ever known- to be so far away that you don't even know yourself anymore and you're not sure you ever want to come back to all the things you're a part of?"
I really enjoy Jamaica Kincaid's writing and I thoroughly enjoyed Lucy. A small book but the prose packs a huge punch. In Lucy we meet a nineteen year old girl who is from the Caribbean, moves to the US to be an au pair for a family who seems to have it all together. From Lucy's perspective we get an idea of the inner workings of the family along with a deep sense of homesickness from Lucy.
As a Caribbean national, who is so used to people leaving the Caribbean to chase the American dream, this book gives a stark look into what it is like, especially from an aware narrator.
A short but really great read.
I really enjoy Jamaica Kincaid's writing and I thoroughly enjoyed Lucy. A small book but the prose packs a huge punch. In Lucy we meet a nineteen year old girl who is from the Caribbean, moves to the US to be an au pair for a family who seems to have it all together. From Lucy's perspective we get an idea of the inner workings of the family along with a deep sense of homesickness from Lucy.
As a Caribbean national, who is so used to people leaving the Caribbean to chase the American dream, this book gives a stark look into what it is like, especially from an aware narrator.
A short but really great read.
December 17, 2008
This was a short book, and I read it in one night, but it will take several more readings for me to really decide how i feel about it. I do really like this book. But sometimes, I feel like Lucy lives in my skin, and sometimes, I don't know who Lucy is at all. This book was so beautifully written, with such a complex character. But it is so short. It needs to be to hold its sense of poetry, but it left me wanting more detail. This is a book that will make you work. Be prepared to read it slowly. Twice. But be sure it is well worth it.
December 4, 2018
..."Men det fanns heller inget som kunde förändra det
faktum att där hon såg vackra blommor, där såg jag
sorg och bitterhet. En och samma syn kunde få våra
ögon att tåras, men våra tårar hade olika smak. Vi
vandrade hem igen under tystnad. Jag var nöjd över
att äntligen ha fått se hur sådana där jäkla påskliljor
egentligen såg ut."
faktum att där hon såg vackra blommor, där såg jag
sorg och bitterhet. En och samma syn kunde få våra
ögon att tåras, men våra tårar hade olika smak. Vi
vandrade hem igen under tystnad. Jag var nöjd över
att äntligen ha fått se hur sådana där jäkla påskliljor
egentligen såg ut."
August 14, 2015
This book is one of my absolute favorite books of all time. Check out my mini-review here:
.
.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,215 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.