Kincaid, Jamaica - Susanna Moore (review date 7 October 1990)

Susanna Moore (review date 7 October 1990)

SOURCE: “A Journey of Self-Discovery,” in Washington Post Book World, October 7, 1990, p. 7.

[In the following review of Lucy, Moore commends Kincaid's powerful prose, but finds shortcomings in the book's detached protagonist.]

Jamaica Kincaid's second novel, Lucy, is cool and fierce. It begins one January night with the arrival of 19-year-old Lucy Josephine Potter, a clear-eyed, intelligent girl from the West Indies, in a big, dirty American city. She has come to work for Mariah and Lewis, minding their four young daughters. Lucy is unworldly. She has never seen snow or been in an elevator. She is accustomed to saying grace before meals and she naively tells Mariah and Lewis her dreams, dreams in which Lewis chases a naked Lucy around the house.

With a selfish importunity that happily does not give her pause, Lucy goes about losing her island innocence with the vitality...

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