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Summary
Summary
From an author Amy Tan calls "a gem," this is a witty, highly acclaimed novel that's "part Mean Girls, part Lord of the Flies " ( The Bulletin, Starred review) about navigating life in private school while remaining true to yourself.
Lucy is a bit of a pushover, but she's ambitious and smart, and she has just received the opportunity of a lifetime: a scholarship to a prestigious school, and a ticket out of her broken-down suburb. Though she's worried she will stick out like badly cut bangs among the razor-straight students, she is soon welcomed into the Cabinet, the supremely popular trio who wield influence over classmates and teachers alike.
Linh is blunt, strong-willed, and fearless--everything Lucy once loved about herself. She is also Lucy's last solid link to her life before private school, but she is growing tired of being eclipsed by the glamour of the Cabinet.
As Lucy floats further away from the world she once knew, her connection to Linh--and to her old life--threatens to snap. Sharp and honest, Alice Pung's novel examines what it means to grow into the person you want to be without leaving yourself behind.
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection
A Texas Tayhas Reading List Selection
A Bank Street College of Education and Children's Book Committee Best Children's Books of the Year with Distinguished Outstanding Merit
"A bracing, enthralling gut-punch and an essential read for teens, teachers, and parents alike." -- Kirkus Reviews , Starred review
"This daring work with an authentic protagonist teaches important lessons about being yourself while navigating through life."-- School Library Journal , Starred review
"Lucy's struggle to find her place and sense of self will have a wide appeal for teen readers and is a welcome addition to the prep-school canon ."-- Booklist , Starred review
" Lyrical, enchanting prose from a narrator with perception so acute she cannot help but share it immerses readers into the very heart of every scene. This is highly recommended for classrooms and libraries [and] a superb choice for book discussion groups and world young adult literature survey courses."--VOYA, Starred review
" 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."-- The Bulletin , Starred review
"Lucy's narration pulls readers alongside her uncertain navigation of two worlds, and we can't help but cheer in solidarity as Lucy recognizes assimilation masquerading as inclusion, refuses to back down, and instead embraces who she is."-- Horn Book Magazine
"In a novel filled with strong visual images , Pung draws a sharp contrast between authenticity and deception, integrity and manipulation. Against the vividly painted backdrops of two very different communities , she traces Lucy's struggle to form a new identity without compromising the values she holds closest to her heart."-- Publishers Weekly
Author Notes
Alice Pung was born in 1981 in Footscray, Australia. She has attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her first book, Unpolished Gem, won the 2007 Newcomer of the Year Award in the Australian Book Industry Awards. She is the editor of Growing up Asian in Australia (2008). Her other books include Her Father's Daughter and Laurinda, which is being adapted into a film. She is also a solicitor and an art instructor.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-The Catholic school Lucy Lam previously attended is a far cry from the opulent Laurinda, a prestigious elite school that awards her an Equal Access scholarship. Lucy, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, brings ethnic diversity to the new school and also a strong sense of moral integrity, which is challenged by a clique of spoiled rich girls known as the Cabinet-girls who intimidate fellow students as well as the faculty. Pung vividly conveys the daily challenges that Lucy faces as she tries to gain acceptance while finding her way in this new environment. Lucy is intelligent and gifted in many ways. Her struggles make her stronger and prove the adage "to thine own self be true." In its printed format, this volume received high praise, and this recorded version is exceptionally well read by Aileen Huyhn. Lucy's story will resonate with teens and with all adults who know the lingering effect of high school memories. VERDICT An excellent selection for teen collections. ["Daring...important.... A strong purchase that will captivate teens and adults alike": SLJ 9/16 starred review of the Knopf book.]-Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, Mt. Carmel, IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lucy Lam, a Vietnam War refugee, lives in a dilapidated Australian town among families like her own: poor, hardworking immigrants who dream of a better life for their children. Lucy gets a chance to make her parents proud when she wins a scholarship to a prestigious private school, but when she arrives at Laurinda, where "the beauty snuck up on you, like a femme fatale with a rock," it's like landing in another world, where her parents' work ethic doesn't apply. At Laurinda, power is valued over brilliance, and the school is ruled by a trio of girls, the "Cabinet," who brazenly torment weaker classmates and undermine teachers. Lucy is both repelled and fascinated by these girls, but to be accepted into their clique means leaving her old ideals behind. In a novel filled with strong visual images, Pung (An Unpolished Gem) draws a sharp contrast between authenticity and deception, integrity and manipulation. Against the vividly painted backdrops of two very different communities, she traces Lucy's struggle to form a new identity without compromising the values she holds closest to her heart. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
No one is more surprised than Lucy Lam when her essay wins her the Equal Access scholarship to attend an elite girls school. Setting out every morning for Laurinda Ladies College, she leaves behind her shabby Melbourne suburb, Chinese-Vietnamese-immigrant parents, baby brother Lamb, and her friends (including closest companion Linh), determined to make good on the opportunity Laurinda and its access to wealth and success offers. A powerful trio of white girls called the Cabinet takes an interest in Lucy, who marvels at their glamour and steadily becomes more ashamed of her own home life, her fathers factory job, and her mothers finger-shredding work sewing clothes in the garage. Lucy feels she is losing herself in trying to be everything the school and her peers want of her, and when she begins to resist, it becomes clear that Laurindas open doorsas well as the Cabinets open armscome at a price. Lucys unwillingness to conform to the role of ethnic novelty or to participate in the toxic school culture quickly turn her from model minority to targeted pariah. Pungs novel, first published in Australia as Laurinda, is written in first-person missives to Linh (whose identity is eventually revealed in an effective twist) that double as diary entries. Lucys narration pulls readers alongside her uncertain navigation of two worlds, and we cant help but cheer in solidarity as Lucy recognizes assimilation masquerading as inclusion, refuses to back down, and instead embraces who she is. anastasia m. collins(c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This Australian author's beautifully written YA debut follows a lower-middle-class Chinese Australian teen who wins a prestigious scholarship to an exclusive all-girls school and struggles to find herself among the snobby mean girls. In a letter to Linh, the constant friend she's left behind, 15-year-old Lucy recounts her first year as an Equal Access scholarship student at Laurinda Ladies' College. Once fearlessly outspoken and full of fun, Lucy has become withdrawn and unsure of herself. A small group of rich, spoiled, and casually racist girls, known as the Cabinet, dominates her class and play horrible pranks on students and teachers with impunity. With the help of a male teacher and a popular boy from a nearby private boys school who's not ashamed of being lower-middle class, Lucy learns to stand up for herself and reject the Cabinet. Lucy's biting comments about Laurinda and her struggle to reconcile her school and home life in the dilapidated and rundown town of Stanley effectively ring true as she realizes her family's immigrant life there is precious. The reveal of the truth of her relationship with Linh is seamlessly incorporated into the narrative. Lucy's struggle to find her place and sense of self will have a wide appeal for teen readers and is a welcome addition to the prep-school canon.--Rawlins, Sharon Copyright 2016 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
Dear Linh, Remember how we used to catch the 406 bus after school, past the Victory Carpet Factory and the main hub of Sunray, through to Stanley? What an adventure, we used to think then. What a waste of time, looking back now. It was a waste of time because the bus would always worm its way back to Stanley, following exactly the same route, stopping at the same places and collecting the same people, who did the same things every same day. Remember that girl from St. Claire's who put her bag on the seat next to her so that no one else could sit down? And how we thought, typical of girls like that. When she got the vibe that we were talking about her behind her back, she turned around and told us to get stuffed. But that wasn't the most shocking thing about her. The most shocking thing was that where we had expected to see white teeth all even like a picket fence, they were herded behind that ugly gate in her mouth. Looking into that paddock of crumbly yellow rocks straining to break free from barbed wire, I thought, no wonder you're going back to Stanley. This is how I see it now. An old strip of seven shops, each with an identical metallic snake of a roller shutter coiled at the top. At night, with those iron blinds lowered, the street looked like a long, continuous, dirty warehouse, all graffiti and concrete. There was the local fish-and-chips shop, the Happy Oyster, which had never seen an oyster, joyous or otherwise, from the first day of its existence. A shop selling smokes, with incredibly expensive and lewd painted plaster figurines in its window--women with serpents and black leather straps instead of clothes. And a hairdresser that still called itself a barber, with a red, white and blue pole at the front and posters in the window of great haircuts from 1983. The largest shop was the convenience store that tried to pass itself off as a mini-mart, with faded packets of instant noodles and cans of soup not seen in a proper supermarket for years. The whole strip could probably rustle up only two or three trays of vegetables. The place that got the most business was Stanley Spirits on the corner. People went there mostly to get beer--half a dozen cans of VB at a stretch, VB standing for Victoria Bitter , which could also express the sentiments of the male residents of Stanley aged between seventeen and seventy. My mum never bought anything from this strip. Instead, she caught the bus to neighboring Sunray and its market, where she could get tomatoes for a dollar a pound if she went near closing time. Ours was the only blue house in Stanley, and I don't mean a pale blue washed out with a lot of white. I mean blue the color of that bubble-gum-flavored ice cream all kids love until they get older and find out how many chemicals are in every scoop. Now I feel the same way about our home. But when I was younger, I loved how it stood out; it was the kind of house a kid would draw, a rectangle in blue and a triangle in red. To our left were the Donaldsons, a lovely older couple who owned a Dalmatian that barked at all hours of the day. They'd come over once a year, two days after Christmas, to give us cake and handfuls of chocolates that tasted like brown crayons. A few months later, at Chinese New Year, Mum would ask me to walk over with coconut sweets or spring rolls, and sometimes I'd bring moon cakes from the Lunar Festival. "Aren't you a sweetie," they'd say. The Donaldsons' house was white, and its cement-rendered front was not pimpled with mold. They had a carefully maintained garden of bougainvilleas, cacti and fuchsias, and an upright mailbox--no small feat in a place like Stanley, where teenagers would drive by with cricket bats, in cars that they'd buy for two hundred dollars and spend two thousand tricking out. Most of the mailboxes in Stanley leaned to one side, as if wincing from their blows. The most enchanting thing about the Donaldsons' house was this: around their front yard were seven little gnomes and a toadstool, each partly hiding behind a flowerpot or shrub. The kids who loved to smash everything that was standing never touched the Donaldsons' peekaboo gnomes. That's what I see, Linh, but I also remember that our closeness to the Donaldsons didn't stop the kids from knocking over our mailbox. Once they even chucked a rock through our front window. I suggested to my father that it was because our blue house was such an irresistible target, but no way was he going to repaint it. When we first moved in, my father took great care to water the plum tree at the front and the apricot tree at the back. After a while he got too busy and said it was a waste of water. "Let the rain take care of it," he said, but the rain was as half-arsed in its dripping as everything else around here, and eventually the apricot tree dried up. The plum tree survived but bore sour pellets. Mum spent most of her days indoors, only going out to shop and collect the mail from our mailbox, or to attend church. She'd always wanted me to go to a Catholic school, which was how I ended up at Christ Our Savior. My father, who didn't really believe in God--not since most of his family went missing, presumed dead, in Vietnam--wanted me to win a scholarship to somewhere else. He also wanted me to stop wasting time doing things for the neighbors and to start hunkering down. "Why do you always interfere with her homework?" he asked my mother. "Where were you when your god was handing out the brains? Holding the door for everyone?" He wanted me to get out of Stanley. He wanted me out of there for my own good. Where we lived was not a place where good stories began, but a place where bad stories retreated, like small mongrel dogs bitten by much larger, thoroughbred ones. Reading back through this first letter to you, I can see I knew even then that where I was going, you were not coming along, and that I would have to leave you and all of this behind. But I did not understand then, as I do now, how difficult it would be to create a thoroughbred from mongrel stock. Excerpted from Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.