Lucid Stars

by Andrea Barrett

Penny Webb falls in love with Benjamin Day, but when their marriage fails, Penny must adjust to a new kind of family life

Genres: Fiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Andrea Barrett is the author of The Air We Breathe, Servants of the Map (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), The Voyage of the Narwhal, Ship Fever (winner of the National Book Award), and other books. She teaches at Williams College and lives in northwestern Massachusetts.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 1 out of 5]

After just over two months of struggling with this boring, inspsid, uninspiring novel, I finally sent it flying out the window into a convenient rainstorm last week. It's not so much that it's a BAD book, really (although insipid is probably the best word I can think of to describe it), it's just that it's been done so much better. Okay, here's the scenario. Young girl from small town is swept off her feet by cosmopolitan socialite, gets pregnant, gets married, finds out that life married to cosmopolitan socialite ain't that great, has kid, leaves cosmopolitan socialite, cos. so. marries second wife, first wife and daughter heal rift. Hmmmm. We've never heard THAT one before.

Once again, we have an overused half-baked plot, and we have a convenient piece of excellent work to hold it up against. If you want a dysfunctional family circus, it's hard to do better than Michael Cunningham's _Flesh and Blood_. It's good that people try, because eventually someone _will_ write a better, funnier, sadder, more intimate novel than Cunningham's, but the discerning reader will realize, by now, that in order to find the bigger pearl, one will be reading a whole lot of swine.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in high school but I remember it as kind of blowing my mind, and the characters have always stayed with me, especially Penny.

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe 2 1/2 stars, as I went from actively hating the first half to being almost interested in the second half. The women characters' shared connection of interest in the stars, whether from astronomical or astrological perspective (as if those are of equal value!), felt very forced, although I appreciated the tribute to astronomer Maria Mitchell. I guess Jill never heard that quote about learning from history. Well I did finish it.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well done story told through the point of view of several different people experiencing it. She draws her characters well and makes you want to know more about their lives.

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

)Exceptional science embellished (stars) novel of family and interpersonnal dynamics told from the point of view of various mothers and daugters in a nontraditional family set in the 1950 - 1970s.