Murphy, Rita. Looking for Lucy Buick.

Murphy, Rita. Looking for Lucy Buick. Random House, Delacorte. 167p. c2005.0-385-729391. $15.95. JS

This tale has a great title and it's packed full of bizarre characters and events. Alice Hoffman meets Billie Letts; that is, magical realism encounters small-town Iowa and kindly characters who take strangers in; in this case, 18-year-old Lucy. The family that raised Lucy, the Sandonis, obtained her along with a Buick in a poker game: she was the infant in the back seat. The gamblers brought her home, but five aunts, all named after flowers, brought her up. By the time Lucy is 18, all the aunts are unaccountably dead and she is left to the not-so-tender mercies of her uncle and cousin, who plan to marry her off for financial gain. Lucy must escape and "find the Buicks," her real parents. Or maybe she thinks of the Buicks metaphorically, but it's hard to tell. A convenient explosion at the Sandoni nylon factory, apparently engineered by her dead Aunt Hyacinth, frees her. She meets a stranger on a train and gets off in Gardenia, Iowa. The aunts appear to her regularly and give her conflicting advice. (Apparently, the dead do not know all.) Eventually, Lucy recognizes that the strangers in Iowa are the Buick family.

Here are some problems: characterization is accomplished by Lucy announcing that other characters are evil or good; a lot of the plot is summarized; nothing in the book is the least bit believable. Nevertheless, if YA readers like fantasy, seeing dead people, and goodhearted strangers, this book is for them. Myrna Marler, Assoc. Proof of English, BYU, Provo, UT