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Lara Calleja: Lucy Min?
Merlin Publishers, 2016.

Lara Calleja’s debut novel Lucy Min? has made a hit with record-breaking sales starting from the day of the launch itself. This coming-of-age story didn’t only have us asking ‘who?’ But also ‘why?’. What is the reason behind the popularity of this book?

We get to know Lucy as she gets to know herself, as she evolves through her mishaps, through her adventures and misadventures. There’s nothing new here, she takes no shortcuts in uncovering the wisdom that comes with age, time and a couple of emotional scars.

And, perhaps, we’ve read this story many times before, too. Every time we discover that there are similarities lurking in this exercise in growth. It is the same for each of us, yet it is a different story we’re telling or hearing.

She declares at the get go: she doesn’t know much. At 14, she wants to know everything there is to know, but how will she go about it?

The digital world has changed drastically in the past 20 years and Lucy finds that behind the ‘safety’ of the screen she can be brave and somewhat daring. And so can everyone else. She is suddenly thrust into this situation where the internet has changed the dating scene and information is at your fingertips at all times.

This is how the scene is set, a story that starts to show us Lucy’s inadequacies, which she has found a way to adapt to so that her shortcomings are rendered somewhat endearing. She talks to us like this, warts and lisps and all, hiding nothing of herself, her brash thoughts resulting in less than classy actions.

Her ‘growing up’ comes in bursts – when there is trouble at home, when she starts dating boys thanks to the internet chat rooms, when she meets George. Each step is not necessarily an improvement, of course, but it is a rite of passage and a way to proceed.

It’s that diary you used to hide under the mattress, the one with a lock and key, the one for your eyes only

In Lucy Min? we can feel the very typical claustrophobia that tends to be present with island life. There was a time when the only way up was out, or so we were told. Failing that, you’d need to go round and round in circles, waiting for scraps to fall off the elite table. Either that, or you needed to be born into a better situation.

This, of course, was not necessarily true. The people who got out, who went to ‘find themselves’ might have ended up coming back to find out that the problem was inside them the whole time. Or, that the problem was the search itself, the settling for a situation – be it a relationship or a partner – that was substandard.

It may be that all they really needed to do was raise their standards, or be braver in tackling their situation. That being said, a change of scenery always helps with pinpointing the cracks and finding which solutions fit.

Lucy does pluck up the courage to handle what seemed to be a dead end. She leaves the island behind at a time when this was less of a norm. She gets to her overdue semicolon; a chance to get to the simple conclusion – the fact that there was always a choice to be made.

And so, this novel doesn’t reveal great truths for all, but it does reinforce the fact that the journey is necessary, whichever way this happens. There’s nothing like discovering how small you really are to put everything back into perspective.

Perhaps, the greatest gift that Lucy Min? gives the Maltese contemporary writing scene is a moment in social history, especially for those who grew up in the 1990s and the noughties. Calleja has set out to write what some would consider unwritable: the dark, not-so-polite thoughts, the anonymous one-night-stands, and the downright awkwardness that might be distinctively Maltese. She calls it ‘pathetically honest’ and it is just that.

Even if we weren’t like Lucy growing up, we know some-one like her and we’ve caught glimpses of her at least out of the corners of our eyes. We’ve seen her huddled up with her friends, skiving off lessons, smelling of beer and damp cushions, using vulgar language with her nearest and dearest as if exchanging niceties.

Lucy Min? is an easy read, a gorgeous-looking book in a very comfortable size, as though it’s that diary you used to hide under the mattress, the one with a lock and key, the one for your eyes only.