Lucy on the West Coast by Mary Beth Caschetta

Lucy on the West Coast

and Other Lesbian Short Fiction

Mary Beth Caschetta

Enter a world of distinctly individual women facing the vagaries of contemporary life in stories written with breathtaking clarity and wrenching insight into the human heart. The characters are as diverse as a Puerto Rican woman who thinks she has AIDS, an Italian war widow, a lesbian prostitute, a young Midwestern girl, a voiceless mother, and three Jewish sisters.

From Publishers Weekly

Nine vastly different female protagonists narrate this debut short-story collection, each placed firmly in late-20th century North America amidst a backdrop of social ills-from AIDS to urban decay. Catholicism has a recurring role, especially in ‘Consecration’,’ in which a cheerleader in a Bronx Catholic junior high is inexplicably attracted to the school slut. Lesbianism also appears in almost every story?whether as a central theme, as in ‘Nuclear Family,’ narrated by a teenage daughter who must come to terms with her dying mother’s lesbian lover; or as an incidental characterization, as in ‘Accommodations,’ in which the lesbian older sister is peripheral to the story. Caschetta examines the turning points in her characters’ lives, those moments when they are pushed into action or resistance, thus transforming their existences and how they view the world. In the title story, spacey Lucy Fernandez, who works at a San Francisco day-care facility for the retarded and yearns for a more dramatic life, constructs a fantasy world in which she has both AIDS and an identical twin living a significantly more exciting life on the East Coast. Edgy prose often contributes to the wit and contemporary feel of these tales, but sometimes the voice is ill matched to the narrator, as in ‘Old Country,’ in which the speaker, an elderly Italian immigrant, sounds absurdly young and of the moment. In the simpler, more straightforward tales, voice and action merge, however, and the transforming points are clear and sharp.

Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The title story of this collection relates the hazards of modern life for a heroine whose friends and acquaintances are ‘always on the verge of dying or getting lost.’ San Franciscan Lucy Fernandez has a fantasy twin as well as AIDS, a concerned mother, and an ability to see and commune with the dead, and she is a woman on the verge of developing or discovering a new identity by any means necessary. So is Sara in ‘Still Life,’ who watches her brother die of AIDS as her mother seeks to forestall the inevitable by buying 12 new plastic lawn chairs because she believes sitting in them will restore his health. Caschetta’s stories are shot through with an antic humor of desperation and remorse, none more than ‘Consecration,’ in which the narrator’s allegiance to the cheerleading team at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Junior High is sorely tested when a newcomer performs ‘an act that would have dethroned even the original Queen of Martyrs.’ Whitney Scott –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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