Publisher's Weekly Review
Lucy, the developmentally disabled title character of Sarkassian's captivating debut, narrates in a distinct voice that will hold up to the inevitable comparisons to Room and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. With her captivating personality and peculiar opinions, Lucy guides the reader through a twisting plot she too is struggling to understand. Sent by her selfish mother to live on a chicken farm run by a couple known only as Mister and Missus, Lucy's closest companion is Samantha, a young pregnant girl whose family has also sent her away. Missus and Samantha take brief turns narrating, revealing parts of the story hidden from Lucy, including that Samantha will give up her baby to Missus and Mister whose own pregnant daughter disappeared. But after the child is born, Samantha finds herself unwilling to give it up, especially when she discovers the truth about the couple's original daughter. Determined to reunite Samantha with her child as she longs to be reunited with her own mother, Lucy sets out on a meandering quest with a fanciful spirit guide in the form of a baby chick. The three narrators' vastly different beliefs about motherhood are touching and often painful, and Lucy's charm makes the story's inherent darkness easier to bear. Agent: Judy Heiblum, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An ambitious debut expresses different versions of maternal need through three female voices, notably that of Lucy, a girl who is "different." There's a whiff of American Gothic about Sarkissian's claustrophobic evocation of life on the chicken farm where frustrated Missus yearns for a child and taciturn Mister looks suspicious in the light of adopted daughter Stella's pregnancy and disappearance. Now, two new girls live there: Samantha, also pregnant, whose baby is destined to be handed over to Missus; and mentally challenged, behaviorally troublesome Lucy, whose mother has instructed her not to leave the farm so that she can come and reclaim her. Sarkissian describes desperation on one side and deceived otherworldliness on the other as Lucy's interior landscape is revealed as a struggle for comprehension, memory and expression, lit with shafts of insight and fantasy. Lucy may be intellectually limited, but she understands, indeed obsesses over, love, family and parenting, which is why she wants to help Samantha and her baby join the father and become a unit. Using Samantha and Missus as alternative first-person narrators helps break up the monotony and oppressiveness of Lucy's stream of consciousness, but there's still a sense of overload to this novel as well as the questionable magic-realist involvement of a talking chicken. A daring, somewhat formless mix of thriller, whimsy and intense emotional portraiture. Shorter would have been better.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Sarkissian's bold debut novel features a unique protagonist, the affectionate and eccentric Lucy, a mentally challenged young girl sent to live on a farm after her mother is no longer able to care for her. Also living there is Samantha, a pregnant teenager who takes Lucy under her wing while Lucy waits to be reunited with her mother. Lucy is eager to please those around her and is fascinated with the idea of family, particularly with her hope of seeing Samantha together with the father of her baby. But Samantha has promised the baby to the farm's owners, known as Mister and Missus. Interjections of Missus' first-person narration slowly reveal a tormented past involving the loss of her adopted daughter years earlier. When the baby is born and Samantha has a change of heart, Lucy takes off on an unexpected journey to fulfill a promise to Samantha. Lucy's dazzling stream of consciousness is heightened with elements of fantasy she is accompanied and guided by a talking pet chicken while Sarkissian tenderly depicts her characters' frailties, fears, and desires.--Strauss, Leah Copyright 2010 Booklist