Rating: I didn’t mind stepping off the train and having to close this book for the day. Sometimes, you just need some time for things to digest before you can carry on reading.
Blurb:
When my dad dropped us off at the front gate, the first things I saw were the rose garden spreading out on either side of the main driveway and the enormous sign in iron cursive letters spelling out LAURINDA. No “Ladies College” after it, of course; the name was meant to speak for itself.
Laurinda is an exclusive school for girls. At its secret core is the Cabinet, a trio of girls who wield power over their classmates – and some of their teachers.
Entering this world of wealth and secrets is Lucy Lam, a scholarship girl with sharp eyes and a shaky sense of self. As she watches the Cabinet at work, and is courted by them, Lucy finds herself in a battle for her identity and integrity.
Funny, feisty and moving, Laurinda explores Lucy’s struggle to stay true to herself as she finds her way in a new world of privilege and opportunity.
Teenagers and school a breeding ground for dual identities, I think. Every teen probably does it to a different extent and in Laurinda, author Alice Pung weaves a tale between who Lucy is at home, and in her community, and who she has to be as a scholarship student to Laurinda, an exclusive girl’s school.
When the book begins, Lucy is funny and graced with a sharp, but warm, wit about the world around her. She reminded me of Cher Horowitz, despite them coming from two worlds about as different as the sun and the moon – bear with me here. It was their humour and warmth that was similar, delivered with an unconscious ease within whatever conversation Lucy was having. Lucy’s parents are Asian immigrants, working hard to give their kids what they couldn’t have, but Lucy finds humour in their differences to the world around them when the book firsts begins, and since I’ve done the same with mine, I could laugh with her.
But, then Laurinda and the Cabinet (Laurinda’s resident mean girls) happen and Lucy grows to be less the warm, funny girl the book opened with as she learns to navigate the world she’s been thrust into. Her parents’ differences are no longer something she finds humour in but something she wants to hide.
The book’s supporting cast of characters are all vividly drawn, with the Cabinet and their parents receiving the most attention. At first, I wanted to know about the girls – the regular girls in Laurinda, the ones that help change things and Lucy at the end of the book more – but then I realised those details had no place in this tale. This was about Lucy finding her way through the Cabinet, the bullying, and everything else Laurinda throws at her to discover why those girls were the friends she should have stuck with in the beginning.
The Cabinet are at their core, bullies — the kind that make nice with Lucy and pretend to be her friend, but that’s all it is, pretending. Their parents are well intentioned too, trying to encourage their daughters’ friendships with Lucy, but don’t realise the vast difference between their lives and Lucy’s – and Lucy does her best to avoid them realising that.
The pressure mounts on Lucy as she observes the Cabinet, and becomes part of their bullying and their power trip within Laurinda — no teacher or student is exempt from them. Coupled with this is her parents’ expectations of her increasing. She has skilfully kept the pressures of school from them, as most teens do, before things come to a head in a most spectacular way for the book, when Lucy tells the truth. So to speak.
This is a book that might make you uncomfortable in some ways – the Cabinet’s bullying for instance were overtures of friendship for those characters who didn’t know any better, who wanted to fit in so desperately they explained the Cabinet’s behaviour away. If you’ve ever pretended to be nice to someone and then turned around and complained about it to your BFF, then you’ll know what I mean here.
There are times in the book that I desperately wanted Lucy to be better that the Cabinet, and I knew she could be, but she wasn’t. But, it was something I could relate to because I’ve done the same, and you have too – kept quiet when you shouldn’t have. That’s the beauty of this book: Lucy will make you uncomfortable when she doesn’t do the right thing, because it seems so easy to do. But, I think most of us have been in situations similar when we were younger and in school and wanted to fit in, even if it meant keeping quiet. You probably didn’t think much of it then, but how about now?
Lucy grows up in her first year of Laurinda, and she just happens to do it within 4 terms and 300-plus pages, whereas we – and I know I did – took years to do it.
Alice Pung is the author of Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter and the editor of the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia. Alice’s
work has appeared in the Monthly, Good Weekend, the Age, The Best Australian Stories and Meanjin. You can find out more about her word on her site.
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