"Lucy" retains the critical tone of "A Small Place" but simplifies the style of Kincaid's earlier work by using less repetition and surrealism. The first of her books set completely outside the Caribbean, "Lucy", like most of Kincaid's writing, has a strong autobiographical basis. The novel's protagonist, Lucy Josephine Potter, shares one of Kincaid's given names and her birthday. Like Kincaid, Lucy leaves the Caribbean to become an au pair in a large American city. At nineteen, Lucy is older than previous Kincaid protagonists, which lends the book a more mature and cynical perspective than in her previous fiction. Still, Lucy has pangs of homesickness and unresolved feelings about her mother, and she has never lived on her own or seen much of the world. With plenty of room for growth and Lucy becoming a photographer, the story takes the form of a "künstlerroman", a novel in which an artist matures.