Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung
Library ed. ISBN 978-0-399-55049-2 $20.99
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-399-55048-5 $17.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-399-55050-8 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 9-12
When fifteen-year old Lucy receives a scholarship to Melbourne’s prestigious Laurinda Academy, she leaves behind her crew at her old school, including Linh, a bold, brash girl whose influence Lucy misses deeply as she becomes embroiled in the murky politics of her new school. Chinese immigrants to Australia (by way of Vietnam), Lucy’s hardworking family provides both a counterpoint and grounding touchstone to her life at Laurinda, where her privileged classmates operate by different, powerful, and cruel rules. This is all related through Lucy’s letters to Linh—astute, measured, and engrossing epistles which, in turn, reveal the falling out between the two. While Lucy’s observations are detached, mature, and sophisticated, Linh’s authentic adolescent voice and raw, incisive reactions as imagined by Lucy provide a critical counterpoint; even readers who figure out the twist in the Lucy-Linh connection through certain well-placed clues will feel the impact of the reveal. In prose deft and clear-eyed, Pung captures Lucy’s two worlds, with unflinching depictions of parental relationships, poverty, and elitism, as well as her emotional journey to incorporating all of her personality. Part Mean Girls, part Lord of the Flies, and part Special Topics in Calamity Physics, this well-observed and unsentimental novel taps into what is primal within privileged adolescent girls. [End Page 592]
