#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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It ended very abruptly and left me very unfulfilled.
quietly powerful
Weird and wonderful. Typical of what I’ve read by this author.
Incredibly well written. I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommend!
Dull and disjointed musings of a shallow person. Going nowhere.
I’ve read this book twice — love it!
Although it was a great character study, I honestly found the book pretty pale. Just never gripped me at all.
Elizabeth Strout is a brilliant writer. Unfortunately, this book reads like something she pulled together from various notes of things she thought might be good to put in a book one day. I got the strong sense she owed her publisher a book and didn’t want to start fresh.
Strout is a good testifier to the existence of human beings as separate planets
I don’t recommend this book. I found it depressing.
Wonderful depiction of the civil war era and the struggle of female people physicians.
I’ve read all of Elizabeth burgs books and loved them all but this one..it is more like a short story or magazine read
This was not my kind of book. I found it boring. I did finish it though, hoping it would get better toward the end. It didn’t. I was very disappointed.
A very fast read about how a woman came from a very dysfunctional back round.
A writer examines her background-growing up poor in the Midwest, her relationship with her mother, and the fact that she is the only one who managed to leave.All of this begins because she is hospitalized for an extende period of time with little to do but think. I would give it 3 1/2 stars if that was possible. It was a good read.
Didnt finish it. Didnt like it at all.
While I admire the author’s sparse writing style – less is more – in several of her other books, this book seemed deficient. The story hits on some deep family themes but then only superficially explores them.
Ended with with little warning — sort of a stream of consciousness book but enlightening even so
I really enjoyed Lucy Barton. It was compelling and sad and everything that a novel should be.
This is a quick read in that once picked up you’re likely to not put it down. Of course it’s character driven. Lucy is a what I would call a sparse character and yet deep and beautifully written.