The Complete Tales Of Lucy Gold — Kate Bernheimer

As a child, Lucy dreams of talking fairies and lives contentedly in the wooded suburbs of Boston; she grows up to be a successful animator of fairy-tale films. Or does she? She claims at moments to be a witch in the woods.

 

Like her sisters, who appeared in Bernheimer's first two novels (The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and The Complete Tales of Merry Gold), Lucy has a secret, but she is unable to fasten onto anything but brightness. Novelist Donna Tartt writes, “Lucy's particular brand of optimism, blind to its own shadow, is very American -- she is innocence holding itself apart so fastidiously that it becomes its opposite.”

 

This novel is a perfect end to the Gold family series, and the perfect introduction, for new readers, to Bernheimer's enchanting body of work.