August 11, 2008
Prep school English teacher Lucy Parker is having a rough day in Gaskell’s disappointing latest: she’s fired after a student lodges a bogus sexual harassment complaint against her, then goes home to find her live-in boyfriend in bed with another woman. Gaskell tweaks this tired setup with the day’s third lightning bolt: Lucy wins $87 million in the lottery. Soon, the press is banging down her door to try to get an interview with the “Lottery Seductress,” and her family and friends see her as a brand-new piggy bank. Overwhelmed, she runs off with an old friend to Palm Beach, where she becomes one of the indolent rich. Sadly, this frothy wish-fulfillment fantasy is undercut by Lucy’s haplessness; she seems all but incapable of making good decisions, and certain characters’ deviousness is so obvious it’s tough to imagine Lucy not realizing she’s being taken advantage of. The ending is, naturally, happy for Lucy, and those who wronged her feel sufficiently bad about it, but her vindication is just as much dumb luck as the lottery win was.