Lucky Girls

Lucky Girls encompasses five stories, set in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent–each one bearing the weight and substance of a short novella–narrated by young women who find themselves face-to-face with the compelling circumstances of adult love. Living in unfamiliar places, according to new and often-frightening rules, these characters become vulnerable in unexpected ways and learn, as a result, to articulate the romantic attraction to landscapes and cultures that are strange to them.

In “Lucky Girls,” an American woman who has been involved in a five year affair with a married Indian man feels bound, following his untimely death, to her memories of him and to her adopted country. And in “Letter from the Last Bastion,” a teenage girl begins a correspondence with a middle-aged male novelist, who, having built his reputation writing about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, confides in her the secret truth of those experiences, and the lie that has defined his life as a man.

Now in a new edition with a preface by the author, Lucky Girls marked the arrival of a writer of exceptional talents, one whose generosity of spirit, clarity of intellect and emotion, and skill in storytelling set her among our most gifted and exciting voices.

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Praise for Lucky Girls

  • 'TRAVELING is for people who don't know how to be happy,'' remarks a housekeeper in New Delhi in Nell Freudenberger's gorgeously written first book, a remarkably poised collection of stories about Americans abroad.

    The New York Times
  • Freudenberger is not showy, and makes her impact quietly. The daughter who has inherited her mother's depression feels as if she has lost a layer, that she is "getting even smaller, like a bar of soap". The five stories are full of such images. They seem to come easily to Freudenberger. Lucky girl, indeed.

    Independent
  • These are tales with depth of field, given richness of colour by their refusal to rush, their joy in details. Yet no words are wasted.

    The Guardian