Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung Book Review

 

Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung Book Review 

Lucy and linh by alice pung it came out a number of years ago at this point. It was originally published in australia in 2014 and then came out in the united states in 2016. 

And it's one of those books that i've had sitting on my like library tbr list that i keep for about that a lot amount of time, and i've been like slowly trying to chip away at that thing. 

But yes, i was originally interested in this book because it hits a lot of ideas and themes that i really enjoy. It is set in australia and you are following this girl as she gets entrance into this really exclusive private school, all girls private school. 

And so you follow lucy over the course of a single school year as she transfers to this new school and her experiences with it. So it's like a coming-of-age story, as you would expect, and it's also about sort of like the atmosphere and world inside of this private school. 

There is like this group of girls called the cabinet who basically like, you know, rule the school and even have a control over some of the teachers and the administrators and things like that, and they get away with a lot of stuff. And so you see lucy trying to navigate this new world that she is a part of. 

She's of chinese descent, and she actually immigrated over to australia from vietnam because her grandparents immigrated from china to vietnam. 

Her mother is someone who works kind of like under the table as a seamstress and her father has like a what seems to be a pretty standard job but they are not they are definitely like middle class, lower middle class people and the school that she's going to is very exclusive. 

And lucy is actually like the first recipient of this new scholarship that they have decided to implement, and they only take like one student a year and things like that. So like this is a very exclusive world that lucy is being brought into. 

So this book is a commentary on like the school but also like larger economic socioeconomic themes in terms of class and money. So yeah, like i said, it's a book that hits on a lot of themes that i am a big fan of and i really enjoy, and overall i enjoyed this book. 

I do feel like the fact that i've read a lot of books in this sort of boarding school world, asian american narratives, things like that — obviously it's australian but you know similar ideas are going on here 

Because i've read a lot of those books, there's nothing in here to me that felt particularly new. 

But i do think that this is one of those books where i'm glad that it exists in the world because it feels like a young little book that a younger version of me would have absolutely adored and would have adored to see. 

If you're someone like me who really enjoys things like mean girls or you really love like the chilton episodes of gilmore girls, like this will feel very very reminiscent to you. 

Some of the things that happen in here with the cabinet feel very reminiscent of things that happened in mean girls. 

There are even like certain scenes in here where i was like i'm pretty sure there was a gilmore girls episode about it. 

Like there's a couple of instances of the school of writing home to lucy's parents because she's like not involved enough in extracurricular activities and things like that. 

So again, if you're someone who like enjoys those stories, then i think that this is another one that sort of feels very reminiscent to that or like in parallel or in line with those sorts of ideas. 

And it talks a lot about some really interesting things in regards to like class and money. Like how certain things are expected when you attend a school like this. Like you have to buy a uniform from this specific vendor whether you can afford it or not, you have to be involved in all of these different clubs that may or may not require more money and also require more time. 

There's the fact that lucy sometimes helps her mom out with work and she has a younger brother who she helps watch and all of this stuff and that isn't taken into account in terms of like how she's spending her time.

And there's also the fact that like lucy is coming into this world with completely fresh eyes. 

So there's a lot of things that like the other students and like even the administrators and things like that just take to be as like standard that lucy feels uncomfortable with or kind of wants to push back on because that's not how things are always done and that's not how things need to be done. 

There's a lot also a lot of like just interesting commentary in terms of the way that not just the students but also like the parents treat lucy as being someone of chinese descent. 

Like there's a scene where one of the girls moms ends up tutoring lucy in english. She basically takes lucy under her wing but then you later find out that like this mom has basically taken under her wing like a lot of different asian girls who have gone to the school. 

Like one of the speculations is that she's hoping that her own daughter would become more like obedient and things like that and wants like that sort of like asian stereotype to rub off on her own daughter and stuff like that. 

And so there's like a lot of like micro aggressions like that that are talked about in here in a really great way. And it's one of those things where it's like in 2016 talking about those types of microaggressions definitely was not as common and definitely not in 2014. 

And so i think that like this is one of those books that brought up the conversation of microaggressions before like microaggressions were really, really well known or like that phrase was like really popularized. 

There's a lot of like really sort of snide or like well-meaning but definitely off-putting comments and like suggestions and conversations that happen in here that again i think that were very common and probably still are very common, but people didn't think about them in the exact same way and so that's always a really great thing to see. 

I do feel like some of the things in here can feel a little bit underdeveloped. Like it goes over the course of an entire school year and there's a lot of different events that occur and it feels like there's a lot of like build up in terms of like lucy confronting the cabinet in a variety of ways. 

I won't get too much into it obviously because it's more fun for you to see it all unfold, but you basically know that that's what this whole book is leading towards and it feels like the resolution from that conflict is really, really fast. 

Like there's basically like one major scene that happens and then you like fast forward to like the end of the school year and i found that to be a little bit unsatisfactory. It would have been nice to see some of it play out a little bit more. 

They like reflect on it, or lucy reflects on it but you don't actually get the satisfaction of seeing those scenes play out, which personally i was kind of looking forward to. One final thing that i do want to say about this book 

But i'm only going to talk about it really briefly is the way that this book is written. It's actually written in a series of like letters. Basically alice pung does something like really unique in my opinion in terms of the way that it's written and it feels like it's kind of a spoiler to kind of say more than that, 

But if you've read this book you know what i'm talking about. And i think that that structure is very unique to this book. So even though i'm saying things like, 'i've read stories like this before,' 'i've watched media or consumed media about these similar themes,' 

I do think that the strongest point to this book is the structure and the way that she sets up the way the events unfold and the way that this book is written and stuff like that. 

Again, it's really, really hard to talk about without going into spoilers and while i did figure out what was going on pretty early on, i did enjoy the way that it was all executed and sort of the way that she's able to explore some of the themes about like finding your identity and finding your voice through the structure.

That's all i'll say about that. So yeah, overall i gave this book a 3 out of 5 stars. It's not one that i would say like you absolutely must pick up but i think that 

If you are interested in more books that are talking about things like this or more  boarding school books, this is definitely one to add to the list and it definitely has like a little bit of a different edge than some of the other ones that 

I've read in the past just because it follows a chinese student and it also takes place in australia. I also think the fact that it takes place in australia takes off the edge a little bit. 

Like i don't know if this is a bias or if there's any truth in this or not but i feel like american stories take things to an extreme and that extreme doesn't actually happen in here and i don't know if that's because it's australian or what. 

Yeah i don't know. It feels like mean girls and like sort of american versions of mean girls always like push the line as much as humanly possible in terms of like what the girls try to get away with and what the girls try to do and there are some things in here that are, you know, kind of appalling. 

But it doesn't take it quite to the extreme that i guess i'm used to. But, and again, i think this also just has to do with the fact that like i've read and watched a lot of media around these ideas. 

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