Lucas by Kevin Brooks

 

I still remember the first time I read LUCAS, and how fucking betrayed I felt by that ending. When I was a teenager, LUCAS was one of my favorite books of all time, because I related to the heroine so much-- she's passive, bitter, and depressed, dreaming of the future while also fearing it, and I think that chaotic and malleable state is going to resonate with a lot of teens. It certainly did for me. And the writing! The descriptions of small town life and complex interpersonal dynamics! Oh my god!

At its heart, this is a dark small town story about the suspicion and animosity that can bubble up like rot as intolerant people close ranks against people they see as different and a threat to their continued way of life. The eponymous Lucas is a drifter who comes to a British island town, and the heroine, Cait, sort of ends up becoming fascinated with him because of how mature and different he is from other boys.

I don't want to say too much else, but this book is HEAVY. It deals with violence, an attempted SA, xenophobia, suicide, alcoholism, and police corruption. Reading it as an adult in 2024, I also noticed some things that flew over my head when I read it back in 2000-whatever. For example, one of the plotlines involves a girl lying about her rape to punish an innocent boy. The heroine is very much on the innocent boy's side, and says all this stuff about how the girl involved is a slut and should be examined more thoroughly. It just felt very odd, because lying about being raped is so rare and to have this girl just nlog her way through her crush's innocence felt icky.

In fact, on my second readthrough, most of the other girls in this book are portrayed very badly, and kind of obviously inferior to Cait. There aren't really any positively portrayed female characters in this book except for her dad's sort-of girlfriend, who isn't really in the picture much at all. It feels like a spot-on portrait of slut-shaming 2000s party culture, and how that might look in a small town in the UK. Which makes this book feel quite dated, but not in a way that feels comfortably removed from today. I felt a lot of things while reading it, and while I still really liked it, I do wonder how much of that is nostalgia because I don't love it anymore.

Also, the quasi-paranormal stuff is just... bizarre. Why does he need to know the future? WHY?

4 out of 5 stars