Review of Lucky Girl by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu

*Lucky Girl* by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu (2023). Published by Dial Press Trade Paperback.

One day I was doom scrolling through Instagram when I saw that someone was doing a roundup post about books being published recently that were set in New York City. If there’s something to note about my reading tastes, no matter how hard I try to deny I ever want to be in New York, I am very very fascinated in literary depictions of New York City, especially if it’s set in the early nineties / late eighties.

I saw this book on the list, and I was specifically intrigued by the title. I ended up Googling it, seeing the synopsis, and booking a copy at my local library immediately.

And boy when I say I flew through this book, I really did. It was one in the morning when I finished because I simply could not put it down, and I ended up crying at the end.

It was an emotional journey for me, and while it is not the perfect book (is anything really is), I loved the stories being told and the characters so much. I felt like I grew with the protagonist, Soila, and went through all of life’s ups and downs personally with her.

Onwards with the review!

In the nineties, Soila moves from Kenya to New York City to start over and get her education.

Our protagonist in Lucky Girl is Soila, who lives at home with her windowed mother in Kenya. Her father’s death, which is revealed to be a suicide when the time comes for her to learn it, means the family business was passed on to her good, God-loving mother, and she employs her various aunts in the business.

One of them has gone away abroad to pursue her master’s and career, and the other aunts live at home—minus her free-spirited aunt who gets kicked out by her mother because she doesn’t have the same core beliefs of getting an education to better herself.

Soila is sent to an all-girls school, but dreams of going abroad. So she applies to schools in New York City, and gets into them. The first task is to convince her mother to let her go abroad, which will be tough. Although her mother finally caves and agrees to let Soila study at Barnard in New York, the condition is that Soila must defer for a year and stay at home. And she does, but something happens in the process—their beloved pastor sexually assaults her. The depression and anxiety spurred by that is what made her mother change her mind, although she doesn’t know the real reason Soila was non-responsive.

And so Soila moves to New York, where she lives with an adopted Asian girl as a roommate. She befriends an African-American girl who will later become her roommate and someone she confides in, and Soila discovers her passion for photography is something she might actually want to do.

Her mother shuts that idea down, though, and tells her to continue studying economics because of how it will ensure that she will be successful. She takes some art classes though at the beginning of her college career, where she meets a Black artist older than her that has an Egyptian name.

Throughout all of this, Soila meets a boy with a Kenyan and white parent, Alex. They begin a serious relationship and Soila eventually loses her virginity to him. After that, though, their close knit nature seems to unravel, and they eventually break up before she graduates college.

Soila lands a finance internship at Cohen & Brothers, which proves to be one of the most difficult tasks of her life because everyone who works in finance sucks, except for the associate Molly who becomes good friends with Soila. At the same time, Soila realizes she wants to stay and not go back to Kenya.

So she graduates, gets an apartment with her good friend, who now has a job at an art magazine, and accepts a full-time position at the finance company. She becomes closer with Molly, and one day her friend ends up putting Soila on a potential date trajectory with the same artist that she met in her college classes all those years ago.

The attraction is undeniable, and their chemistry is off the charts, and after a fight with her friend/roommate, she ends up moving in with him, quits her job after Molly dies in 9/11, and decides to pursue photography.

That sparks new conflict with her traditional mother, and they stop speaking. But one day, her mother shows up and seems confused, leaving her luggage behind in the airport.

After she lands herself in the hospital, they discover she actually is developing dementia, and Soila’s relationship unravels. She takes her mother back to Kenya, calls off her engagement, and lives miserably until her friend gets married. At the wedding, she sees her ex-fiance, they get back together, and they end up living in Kenya.

Overall Thoughts

This is such a gorgeous novel, even though it takes place over a longer stretch of time than expected. Usually I tend not to go for novels like that because the author loses enough content to sustain the plot in a way that’s productive, but I felt like Lucky Girl was done just right.

Some of the more interesting discussions in the novel come from the fact that Soila is Kenyan and doesn’t understand the unique struggles that African Americans face when compared to African immigrants, and a big part of her learning journey is realizing how she fits into this puzzle as an educated Kenyan who speaks with a British accent. I felt like I really grew with her in this novel, and although I am not Black, I felt the discussions brought up were really important.

There’s a distinguished between African American and African in the political theories I’ve read for graduate school, and this novel did an interesting job of examining that. I’ll definitely be reading more of this author’s work!

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