Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (March 26-29, 2005)
Lucy Josephine Potter is a nineteen-year-old girl who leaves her home in the West Indies to be a nanny somewhere in the Great Lakes region. She feels she has escaped her home and expresses hatred for it. At the same time, she compares all of the new observation in her life to the standards of her early life.
Lucy is young, but acts even younger and more immature than her someone her age should be. She expresses disgust and hatred for anything she dislikes without consideration. Her disarming honestly is a strength at times, but more frequently a sign that she wants to shock and keep people away from her by lashing out. The author never gives the reader any indication of why Lucy is this way, and Lucy’s lack of personality growth is a real disappointment.
The most interesting part of the story was her relationship with her mother. Lucy expresses disgust for her mother and her choices, and refuses to read letters from her, but she never explains the reason for her hatred to the reader. While it may be a form of rebellion against a parent, it seems more than that. For someone her age, it is confusing that she refuses to see her mother and treats her with such contempt, when it is clear that her mother needs her. At the same time, she seemed at times to crave her mother’s company, but Lucy still turns her back on her. The most disappointing aspect of this book was that Lucy’s detachment from her mother (and all the other characters) was still unresolved at the novella’s conclusion. I expected Lucy to mature, to resolve some aspect of her personality, to find someone she cared for, but she was as disappointed that she was as aloof and disdainful as ever.
While in a wonderful position, caring for sweet children, with a friendly employer Mariah (who’s marriage is crumbling), Lucy is dissatisfied. It’s hard to understand why. She drops her studies in the evenings to be a nurse, and attaches herself to a man, described by her friend Penny, as a pervert. She even expresses her hostility and dislike for Penny, the only friend she has that’s her age. Time and time again, as a reader, I wondered at her self-absorbed nature. Instead of maturing and becoming a stronger women, she was possibly more stunted and lost at the end than the beginning. Unfortunately, Lucy lacked a clear plot, character development and the cohesion I enjoy in a good story.
