What readers think of Edgar and Lucy, plus links to write your own review.

"Edgar & Lucy" by Victor Lodato is a wonderful book about love, loss, and reconciliation. Edgar is an eight year old boy who lives with his grandmother, Florence and his mother, Lucy. Florence, who was the nurturing woman in Edgar's life, dies unexpectedly and Edgar and Lucy must learn to love and care for each other in a whole new way. This is a book about growing up and the many ways people change through the hardships and challenges of life. I recommend this book to readers who are looking for a thought-provoking story that can be read in a leisurely way.

What a wonderful book. Both uplifting and disturbing, with characters that are at once unrelatable and yet completely human. While the book is about the relationship between a mother and her son, it is also about love, land loss, and mourning and somehow manages to be a feel good book at the same time. It is unlike anything I have read in a long time.

Sigh. That's the sound of this reader's awe. It's the sound of contentment, the sound of sadness. Contentment and awe at the writer's skill with words and plot, sadness that the final word has been read.
Edgar and Lucy by Victor Caduto is a novel everyone MUST read. A story of loss, of the lost, of the found, of familial love and history, and the indomitable spirit of a woman named Florence. Filled with a cast of characters that we come to know and hold in our hearts, this is a novel that the reader will never forget and will recommend to anyone who will listen to that praise. AMAZING!!

Edgar is eight. His grandmother loves him unconditionally, his mother is distant and enigmatic, his father is dead. This story of a little boy navigating life in the face of profound sorrow and dangerous choices is engaging and gripping. Told from the perspectives of several different characters we are able to see all sides of Edgar and Lucy's story and root for them to find themselves and each other. I loved this book and these people, even when they were doing unlike able things.

If only I had gotten it a few weeks later I could have read it on vacation in much less time! Sadly, I would have to put it down to go to work or sleep.

How many languages can you spell love? I would shout it from the rooftops exclaiming my adoration for this novel about a special little eight year old and his family. I could tell from the very first page that this was a novel that I was going to savor and enjoy. Eight year old Edgar is an unusual albino child born into a "messy" family with complicated love issues. Lodato has created a child with such wonder, imagination, humor and pathos that I wanted to grab him and hold him tightly to my chest. It is a family narrative of love and grief taken to the extreme contexts,but the characters are so fleshed out that one feels as if they know them, although they may find some of them irritating or difficult to understand at first. Lucy, Edgar's mother, is pregnant with him at an early age, and due to her lack of maturity and upbringing, has absolutely no idea how to mother this child. However, her mother in law succeeds where she does not. Other characters enter this fray, and continue to set up obstacles as the young boy ages. My one slight disappointment was in the last few chapters which I thought were rushed and made me feel bereft of the fullness of the novel. However, no spoilers here. Just.read.it.

This emotional story about a dysfunctional family focuses on eight year old Edgar. The over bearing grandmother, and Edgar's remote mother create such a tragic environment that it's difficult to engage with the story. But, this changes after the first hundred pages. I found this book well written, and impactful.

Victor Lodato begins his tale of eight year old Edgar and his mother Lucy with a recounting of Edgar's birth. "Size of a dinner roll…And so white, I thought you were a friggin' ghost." Lucy's son is albino and she's a young widow reeling from her husband Frank's apparent suicide. The two live with Florence, Edgar's paternal grandmother. Deeply religious, Florence provides a stability for Edgar and Lucy that is safe yet stifling, especially for Lucy who rebels by hooking up with anyone available. All three huddle under the cloud of Frank's mental illness and subsequent death. And when Florence passes away suddenly Edgar and Lucy are left to figure it all out on their own.
Lodato's characters have qualities and foibles that make the course of the story inevitable. Edgar is both innocent and wise yet angry and curious. Lucy, impetuous and deeply wounded by the loss of Frank can't shake her past. And Conrad, who may or may not be Frank in purgatory, tries to mend his broken heart by breaking those of others. Not all is dark however. Ron, the butcher, whose delivery truck sign reads "Let us MEAT your needs!" is fairly normal except for his choice of lovers. The dry goods store owners, Netty and Henry Schlip and the neighbor's mentally challenged daughter Toni Ann who is in love with Edgar, are in and out of the lives of Edgar and Lucy but provide a thin but strong glue that hold Edgar and Lucy together even as they appear to be bursting apart.
Reading Edgar and Lucy is a descriptive treat. A delicious example includes: "The little party of five was sitting in the dining room—a narrow, ill-lit rectangle with a faux-candle chandelier that offered the greater part of its light to the ceiling, while leaving the under-gatherers in a cloud of luminous neglect." However, early in the book Edgar thinks "Love is so exhausting." This quote precisely describes not only the plot but the feeling that one gets while navigating the five hundred plus pages that comprise the novel—exhausted. Recommended for those who have the time to appreciate an exhaustive yet very imaginative creation.

This books is a puzzle for me in that it is not the type of book I usually enjoy. It is a dark story, full of unhappy people, but the more I read, the more I wanted to read it. The compelling part was the need to find out what was going to happen to Edgar.