Agatha of Little Neon

June 1, 2021
Four young nuns wind up running a halfway house full of quirky characters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Four Catholic sisters live with the elderly Sister Roberta in upstate New York. All on the edge of turning 30, the young women are at loose ends: Their day care is shuttered, and Sister Roberta is retiring. However, the four women refuse to be parted: "We were fixed to one another, like parts of some strange, asymmetrical body: Frances was the mouth; Mary Lucille, the heart; Therese, the legs. And I, Agatha, the eyes." Eventually, the Buffalo diocese decides to transfer them to Rhode Island, where they are put in charge of running Little Neon, a "Mountain Dew"-colored house for residents trying to get sober and get back on their feet. When the local Catholic high school needs someone to teach geometry, the sisters volunteer Agatha, who is labelled as the quietest but the smartest of the quartet. As Agatha immerses herself in her new life, she finds the residents of Little Neon, from parolee Baby to Tim Gary, whose disfigured jaw prevents him from finding love, open her eyes to new realities, as do her colleagues and students at the high school. Eventually, Agatha can no longer ignore that the church, and most of all she herself, is changing. Luchette's novel, her first, is structured in small chapters that feel like vignettes from a slightly wacky indie film. The book is frequently vibrant with resonant images: Agatha learning to roller skate in Little Neon's driveway or a resident drunk in a sequined dress riding a lawnmower through the snow. But even though the book feels light, Luchette does not turn away from the responsibility of examining the darkness undergirding the institution of the Catholic Church. A charming and incisive debut.

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June 14, 2021
A quartet of nuns navigates unexpected changes in Luchette’s dynamic and resonant debut. Frances, Mary Lucille, Therese, and narrator Agatha are transferred to a Rhode Island halfway house called Little Neon that’s painted the “chemical, lurid” color of Mountain Dew and houses a collective of eccentric characters such as Lawnmower Jill, who drove drunk too many times and now resorts to driving the vehicle from which her nickname is derived. Luchette profiles the nuns with crisp precision, portraying their leader Mother Roberta as a tinderbox of nerves and pent-up frustrations who is angry that “the church she’d loved all her life was reluctant to change”; noting the sisters’ “ovarian synchrony”; and describing the secretly gay Agatha’s observation of two girls kissing in her classroom (she also teaches at a local high school) as “moving their heads the way pigeons do.” As Agatha builds confidence while giving geometry lessons, she and her sisters are challenged by the home’s residents’ judgments of their biblical teachings, such as one who claims the story of Noah’s ark is about “how God hates gay people.” Employing short, clipped chapters and shimmering prose, Luchette garnishes each scene with tender and nuanced descriptions of longing and chastity, creating a lovely story of how cross-cultural exchange can foster hope and fruitful advancements. This is charming and remarkably thoughtful.

July 21, 2021
As Luchette's debut novel opens, Sister Agatha reveals that Pope John Paul II has just died. The Catholic Church can no longer deny that some of its priests have sexually abused children, and church attendance plummets in the Northeastern parish where the four sisters, Mary Lucille, Therese, Frances, and Agatha, have been assigned. Finding themselves under-employed, they are sent to Rhode Island. Little Neon, a brightly painted structure, is a halfway house for people with chemical dependencies. None of the sisters has the skill or training or even personal background for such work, but they try to care for residents Horse, Lawnmower Jill, and Tim Gary, whose lower jaw is partially missing. To say these folks are ""the least of these"" is understatement. The book is told in flashback, after Agatha has left her fellow-nuns, and the build-up to her departure is well-paced and convincing. Readers will appreciate Luchette's finely observed characters and forgive the plot lapse of having a pre-term baby come home from the hospital a day after its birth.

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