Lady Moses: A Novel

By Lucinda Roy

Book Overview

Jacinta Moses is the daughter of a black African writer and a white British actress. Though traumatized at a young age by her father's death, her mother's madness, and her own wretched poverty, she manages to draw on her dauntless spirit to survive. As she grows older, however, prejudice -- her own as well as that of others -- leads her to make adventurous but damaging choices in her life. It is only when her daughter Lady is born with a physical disability that she is able to rise above her pain to find true happiness.Set in Africa, London, and America, Lady Moses is a powerful novel less about issues than about how one extraordinary woman uses her creativity, intelligence, and strength to shape an identity that transcends the lines of color and class. It promises to join the ranks of contemporary classics of African-American literature.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006018244X
• ISBN13: 9780060182441
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 382 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

The book, the person

Sometimes actions are more important than books. So this isn't about the book or any of your books. It's about you the person. You were doing your best, trying to teach him and help him and protect your other students and colleagues. Thank you. Hans Bergmann

Intriguing

"Lady Moses" is an evolving tale of the coming of age of Jacinta Louise Buttercup Moses. This novel exposes the struggles of this young woman who, as a child, was circumferenced with love and fantasy. As her life begins to unravel, so does the novel's diverging story line. The strong admiration for her father was felt as one unexpected incident led to another, leaving little Jacinta alone and unadaptable to the home life around her. Jacinta grows from youth to adult with a host of complexities that lead to many imperfections in her life, Lady Moses, for one. This leaves Jacinta no choice but to come to terms with reality and take life for what it is; 'not perfect'. Lucinda Roy does a great job in depicting symbolic expressions to move the tone of the story. Such a seemingly outrageous happening near the end was needed to reiterate the theme of the book that "all it not always as it seems." This story, with its complex characters and their complex life circumstances will challenge readers to open their minds to all of life's possibilities, including the reasonably impossible.

An Excellent Debut

Ms. Roy was the keynote speaker at my graduation from Virginia Tech in December 1996. We were mesmerized by her words about her life, and how wonderful to now read her novel, which contains many parallels to her own life! I hope to read many more novels from Ms. Roy. Her eye for detail is keen, and the narration of the young Jacinta is touching, with her innocence and literal view of the world. A must for any book collection. I urge the graduates of Virginia Tech to read this book!

Lady Moses is nothing like it sounds

When my mother gave me this book, I read the title and be-grudgingly told her I would read it. I am so glad I did! The first chapter is a little confusing, but if you stick with it through chapter 2, you're going to be hooked. I flew through the rest of the pages. It was a fabulous novel from an unusual perspective and there are so many suprises along the way!

Lucinda Roy writes like an angel.

The heroine of "Lady Moses," Jacinta Buttercup Moses, is an inspiration, Roy's prose is by turns hysterically funny and heartbreaking, and the last fifty pages of this book were so riveting I had to take the phone off the hook.