Agatha of Little Neon
A Novel
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Sublime.” —Oprah Daily
“Wry, insightful and remarkable.” —Scott Simon, NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday
Claire Luchette's debut, Agatha of Little Neon, is a novel about yearning and sisterhood, figuring out how you fit in (or don’t), and the unexpected friends who help you find your truest self
Agatha has lived every day of the last nine years with her sisters: they work together, laugh together, pray together. Their world is contained within the little house they share. The four of them are devoted to Mother Roberta and to their quiet, purposeful life.
But when the parish goes broke, the sisters are forced to move. They land in Woonsocket, a former mill town now dotted with wind turbines. They take over the care of a halfway house, where they live alongside their charges, such as the jawless Tim Gary and the headstrong Lawnmower Jill. Agatha is forced to venture out into the world alone to teach math at a local all-girls high school, where for the first time in years she has to reckon all on her own with what she sees and feels. Who will she be if she isn’t with her sisters? These women, the church, have been her home. Or has she just been hiding?
Disarming, delightfully deadpan, and full of searching, Claire Luchette’s Agatha of Little Neon offers a view into the lives of women and the choices they make.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A quartet of nuns navigates unexpected changes in Luchette's dynamic and resonant debut. Frances, Mary Lucille, Therese, and narrator Agatha are transferred to a Rhode Island halfway house called Little Neon that's painted the "chemical, lurid" color of Mountain Dew and houses a collective of eccentric characters such as Lawnmower Jill, who drove drunk too many times and now resorts to driving the vehicle from which her nickname is derived. Luchette profiles the nuns with crisp precision, portraying their leader Mother Roberta as a tinderbox of nerves and pent-up frustrations who is angry that "the church she'd loved all her life was reluctant to change"; noting the sisters' "ovarian synchrony"; and describing the secretly gay Agatha's observation of two girls kissing in her classroom (she also teaches at a local high school) as "moving their heads the way pigeons do." As Agatha builds confidence while giving geometry lessons, she and her sisters are challenged by the home's residents' judgments of their biblical teachings, such as one who claims the story of Noah's ark is about "how God hates gay people." Employing short, clipped chapters and shimmering prose, Luchette garnishes each scene with tender and nuanced descriptions of longing and chastity, creating a lovely story of how cross-cultural exchange can foster hope and fruitful advancements. This is charming and remarkably thoughtful.
