Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy

Penguin Michael Joseph Mermaid Collection 2025; originally published by Macmillan, 1951

Why?

After stumbling across Margaret Kennedy’s better-known novel The Feast in a charity shop last year - and enjoying it enormously - I was intrigued to see Lucy Carmichael revived by Penguin Michael Joseph as part of their new Mermaid series, which celebrates neglected mid-to-late twentieth-century novels by women writers.

Enjoyment factor

This is not as immediately engaging as The Feast, whose tightly controlled plotting shows Kennedy at her most assured. That’s surprising, given that Lucy Carmichael was her tenth novel and written later in her career. It's long, and feels in need of firmer editing, particularly in the middle sections, some of which I skimmed.

The eponymous heroine remains oddly elusive: likeable enough, but never fully coming into focus. The plot is deliberately quiet, circling a single central question - what makes a good love-match - but it never quite gathers momentum. It doesn’t feel like a must-read, which only heightens the intrigue of its inclusion in the Mermaid series.

It left me thinking…

Primarily about the enduring importance of choosing the right person to spend your life with - the novel’s core concern - and how little that question has changed in the 75-plus years since it was written. It also prompted reflection on the idea of the “quiet” novel: why Kennedy chose this restrained, inward mode so late in her career, after producing works that are both more complex and more confidently executed.

And yet, despite all this, the book lingered. The characters stayed with me. I found it comforting to return to them, and I never once considered abandoning the novel part-way through. That, in itself, suggests a subtler success - one that resists easy dismissal. I'm definitely going to read more Kennedy.