#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the tender relationship between mother and daughter in this extraordinary novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys.Soon to be a Broadway play starring Laura Linney produced by Manhattan Theatre Club and London Theatre Company • LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF … LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The New York Times Book Review • NPR • BookPage • LibraryReads • Minneapolis Star Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
Praise for My Name Is Lucy Barton
“A quiet, sublimely merciful contemporary novel about love, yearning, and resilience in a family damaged beyond words.”—The Boston Globe
“It is Lucy’s gentle honesty, complex relationship with her husband, and nuanced response to her mother’s shortcomings that make this novel so subtly powerful.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A short novel about love, particularly the complicated love between mothers and daughters, but also simpler, more sudden bonds . . . It evokes these connections in a style so spare, so pure and so profound the book almost seems to be a kind of scripture or sutra, if a very down-to-earth and unpretentious one.”—Newsday
“Spectacular . . . Smart and cagey in every way. It is both a book of withholdings and a book of great openness and wisdom. . . . [Strout] is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times.”—Lily King, The Washington Post
“An aching, illuminating look at mother-daughter devotion.”—People
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Elizabeth Strout never fails to amaze me with her simple, yet never simplistic, work. Her compassion and keen insight into the human condition never fails to impress, but more importantly, never fails to touch my heart. My Name is Lucy Barton is no exception. This is a book that immerses you in a woman’s life and her feelings and memories will touch you because, although she’s a distinct and wonderful literary creation, her essence is universal. Lucy points it out in the book, but this idea is so universal and life-affirming that it bears repeating: “No one comes from nothing.”
This book is so breathtaking in its beauty – the writing exquisite—the sentences, the style, the beats work in perfect harmony. I thought after reading Olive Kitteridge there could never be a character as perfectly rendered, but Lucy is equally drawn. I happened to have read Anything is Possible before reading Lucy, but I don’t think it matters. Elizabeth Strout is remarkable. She moves her timelines fluidly within her stories and like memory it all flows together, as does life.
This book was a quick one day read. I really liked this book due to how relatable it felt. It’s about a writer reflecting on her life before and after she was sick in the hospital. She reflects back on her upbringing in extreme poverty and the mental and physical abuse from both of her parents, to her adult life and her struggle to really connect with others. Great read, highly recommend!
I was introduced to Elizabeth Strout’s books through my book group and am delighted to have discovered them. We read My Name is Lucy Barton and have never had so much to say about such a slim volume as this. Personally, I love reading American female authors (Anita Shreve, Ann Tyler) for their ability to get to the heart of the matter using few incisive words. I fully intend to read more from Strout.
Looking back over my reading in the last little while, I see that this novel stands out from all the rest. Reading it was like driving across the country nonstop, or taking a long flight half-way around the world. I was locked in a tight space, with Lucy’s voice in my ear, trying to get where she wants to go. Compact, pointed, resolved.
Strout has written a spare, quiet, unassuming book that speaks volumes about the relationship between a mother and daughter. Lucy’s in the hospital, and her mother visits her for the first time in many years. It commingles their conversations and Lucy’s memories of growing up. Strout’s language is spot on and beautiful. Strout has returned to the exquisite writing of Abide with Me, and I’m so happy after being disappointed by Olive Kitteridge. This is one beautiful book.
My Name is Lucy Barton
It’s been a couple of days since I finished reading this book and I have been thinking about it since. What makes this book so gripping, almost haunting? It’s certainly not the plot, but definitely the voice of Lucy Barton that conveys the feelings of loneliness and isolation, and her attachment to her past, her family, her parents, and her present, her marriage and her daughters. Written in sparse language, accentuated with repetition to deliver her state of mind, her stream of consciousness, we get glimpses of Lucy’s life, her relationships or lack of relationships, and read between the lines. What is not said is poignant, as well as what has been said. A childhood deprived of love from her parents, poverty, and isolation from the main stream of life. Lucy begins to read books to escape into another world and stays at school to do her homework to keep warm, rather than going home to the cold garage where her family lived during most of her childhood. Lucy is a good student and she breaks free from her past after her college education.
From Amgash, Illinois to Manhattan, New York, Lucy’s life changes, but the past remains with her as we gather from her conversations with her mother at the hospital where Lucy stays after an operation that has gone wrong. Lucy’s mother spends five days with her while they talk about the people in her hometown. Lives that have gone wrong, people who did well, yet experienced unhappiness in the end. Lucy hasn’t seen her mother for many years and she doesn’t see her for many years afterwards, until she visits her mother at the hospital where she dies. Lucy loves her mother, but her mother is unable to say “I love you.”
As well as the many characters from Amgash, Illinois, there are two important people in Lucy’s life that shape her career as a writer. Sarah Payne, the writer, and Jeremy, the sophisticated neighbour who dies of AIDS. Lucy loves her daughters and does not divorce her husband until they leave home. Yet, what her daughter, Becka, says afterwards is something that will stay with her all her life.
Her past is what makes Lucy. The fact that she comes from ‘nowhere’ is something her mother does not accept. It is also the reason that isolates Lucy from her new surroundings, and her husband. Jeremy says she needs to be ruthless to be a writer. Sarah Payne says, “You’ll have only one story. You’ll write your one story many ways.” Lucy knows if she doesn’t divorce her husband, she will never write another story. She finds another man who comes from ‘nowhere’ and embraces her life, her traumas, her dark side.
I finished this book in the morning, found myself thinking about it constantly, and started reading it once more that evening–something I never do. The book is short, and it is wide, and it is deeply, achingly honest. I may just pick it up again soon. Who knows what I might discover?
Maybe that is what struck a chord with me: Strout’s prose and thoughts (inextricable) are spare, but offer up entire worlds, both in what they directly point to and in what they pass by with only a nod or a wincing glance.
Chapters are more like a collection of short stories or essays. Quietly & astutely introspective of self & the human condition.
None of the bubble words fit this book, although it is truly original and easy-to-read. From the first word to the last, Lucy Barton held me enthralled by the simplicity of her voice and the unfolding of her tale. Elegant is a bubble word I would have chosen. Moving and unforgettable might be others. I loved it and look forward to reading it again.
Loved this book
An amazing book about how family relationships haunt our days.
I would recommend if you are planning on reading Anything is Possible.
Along with Kent Haruf, Elizabeth Stroud is currently my favorite novelist, and unlike Haruf, she’s still alive, so there’s hope for more of her well-nigh stethoscopic soundings of the moment-to-moment emotional lives of her (mostly) small town characters. Much of her work reads like inter-related short stories, and that’s true with Lucy Barton as well. What’s most astonishing is how she captures the tiny turns of the heart as they register in a tone of voice, a pang in some organ of the body, or a stray memory. And while she’s at it, she is TOTALLY convincing that her characters are real people whose lives never appear in the paper but whom you care about deeply without having to personally identify with them. And your interest won’t be sociological or journalistic in nature. It’s as though they’re a long-lost distant relative who’s always been in the background of your life, has never been well-understood or vivid, and then something happens that puts them in the glare of your headlights and, all of sudden, you see some microscopic moment of ethical grace or cowardice in them, and you’re able to glimpse some crystallizing piece of the entirety of their inner lives. BTW, I’ve read Lucy Barton as a book and listened to it as an audiobook. Both ways are wonderful, but the woman who narrates the audio is PERFECT! She manages to suspend her flat mid-Western voice in mid-air between 15 different emotions and let you notice all 15 of them at once.
I loved Olive Kitteridge so much that I re-read it after I turned the last page. I was expecting the same from My Name is Lucy Barton, but it was a very different book. While the former is an unflinchingly honest portrayal of a prickly character (and a prickly town), the latter is far gentler, leaving the reader to fill in missing pieces. Don’t get me wrong: I love books that give readers credit for being able to figure out things on their own, but perhaps this book was too subtle for this reader. Nevertheless, Strout is such an elegant writer that I had to re-read portions of her prose and dialogue, which rang so true to life. At times, I almost felt that Strout was telling her own story, the story of a girl who wanted a life completely different than the one in which she was raised. But regardless of the “other” life she constructed, she remained tethered to the family into which she was born. There are some ties that bind and some ties that we wish to break but cannot, no matter how hard we try.
I will read anything of hers.
I think what I enjoyed about this book was the honesty that the author tries to have on behalf of Lucy. But having a turbulent relationship with my own mother, I couldn’t fully enjoy this book. I gave it four stars because of the uneasiness it caused me by remembering my own mother/daughter relationship but not five stars because of the disjointed flow of the story, even if this is perhaps the way we remember things. Maybe that’s the brilliance of the writing, but it put me off. I’m glad I read it but I don’t think it’ll make to my favorites list.
My Name is Lucy Barton caught me by surprise. The premise sounded a bit boring but once you start reading, you realize this little novel is so much more than a woman recovering in a hospital. Lucy’s memories are heart-wrenching yet they are delivered in such a matter-of-fact voice that you marvel at the strength and fortitude of the character. A powerful story of a woman that refuses to be a victim.
I didn’t like the mother or the ending.
Very moving…excellent characterization.