Lucy Von Alstyne sends fictitious letters to her friend Alicia, pretending to be the father of Alicia's twins, and the two welfare mothers and their five children set off on a journey to find him, facing along the way the complications of living in poverty and raising fatherless children.

Smart-mouthed Luce, an 18 year old single mother living on the dole in Winnipeg, is the narrator of this story about friendship and hardship. The poverty and loneliness are enough to bring anybody down, but the single mothers living in the public housing make a supportive community with their resilience and irreverent humor. To escape their feeling of entrapment, Luce, her friend Lish, and their collection of kids set off on a trip to Colorado. You can hardly call this a coming-of-age novel since the women have all lived enough to be middle-aged, but their literal and figurative journey does bring them insights and wisdom. ( )

Lucy is an 18-year-old single welfare mom. She lives in low-income housing, populated largely by other single welfare moms and their children. Miriam Toews has written a story about life as a poor, single mom that rings true, never moralizes, and is at times funny and other times sad but always hopeful.

The "amazing luck" in the title is perhaps ironic...or maybe Lucy really does appreciate the life she has managed to build with her son, friends and the promise of a strengthened relationship with her dad. ( )

Loved this book! I live in Canada, and so many of the weather references rang true to me. Thoroughly enjoyed the cast of characters, and the hilarious yet tragic vivid descriptions of common events in a young single mom's life ... 3 wheeled umbrella stroller in the rain, bike riding yuppster passing in spandex ... ( )

There's nothing amazing or lucky in this book. Perhaps a better title would have been, "My Down-And-Out Tale." Perhaps the title is trying to be ironic. It's a story about a single mother who's on welfare. Her situation is miserable. But her story is told with an air of humor and indifference to her environment.

There aren't very many novels written about the welfare class. And there are even fewer novels written about women on welfare free of moralizing. This book simply tells the story, and it is what it is. In this way Miriam Toews demonstrates her ability to make her writing interesting while writing about common uneventful sorts of things.

In some ways this book could be described as a first person narrative focusing of trivial everyday sorts of thoughts and feelings. There are some symbols and motifs for people who look for them: rain, washing off graffiti, diverting storm water from one place to another, flooded basements, a journey to nowhere. Then near the end there is some excitement and new hope. It ends with mild optimism, but certainly no "happily ever after."

The following quotation caught my eye for some reason. It's two poor people talking about being poor:

"Yeah, but we're poor because we're stupid. And being poor makes us more stupid."
"No, it doesn't. It makes other people think we're stupid. You know there are so many pissed-off people who are considered much more successful than me, but I think I'm happy, I feel happy. I don't know why. I have Dill. I'm young. We're on the road. Stuff's happening. I wish it was enough to be happy. It should be, you know. That should be the mark of success, you know, just a general feeling of happiness...." ( )