Lucy Church Amiably

Lucy Church Amiably was first published in Paris in 1930, but was not released in America until 1969, where it proved to be unpopular. It still remains one of Stein’s least known and most difficult works. Stein composed the novel during the summer of 1927, during a period when she had befriended and hosted many prominent writers and artists at her home. One such person was Ernest Hemingway, with whom she developed a close friendship and he asked her to be godmother to his son. They met in Paris at the very beginning stages of Hemingway’s career and shared mutual friends. However, their relationship later broke down acrimoniously, in part due to Hemingway satirising the work of their friend, Sherwood Anderson, in his novella Torrents of Spring. She felt it was a cruel attack and unnecessary lampooning of Sherwood and their relationship degenerated into viciousness, as Hemingway remarked in a letter to his editor that Stein ‘had lost all sense when she had the menopause’ and she repeatedly attacked his masculinity.
The novel derives part of its title from a French village called ‘Lucey’, which was situated close to where Stein was staying that summer in Bilignin, in the south east of the country. The plot of the work is difficult to summarise, as it is not a novel of action and very few events occur. Lucy Church Amiably is a book about language and Stein creates a dizzying and distorting style of repetition, which forces the reader to engage with ideas about how language is employed and how it shapes one’s thoughts and perceptions.