My Name is Lucy Barton

Summary (from the publisher): A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. Now, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, this extraordinary writer shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all—the one between mother and daughter.

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.

 

Review: In spare prose, a seemingly simple story about a woman recovering during an extended hospital visit slowly reveals itself to be a deeper reflection on imperfect love, writing, and coming to terms with one's true self. From a distance of many years, Lucy Barton recalls a time when she was a young mother and tentative writer in New York City and a simple operation leads to a complicated recovery. Her mother, who she hasn't spoken to for many years travels to sit with her daughter while she recovers. Although they discuss hometown gossip, right below the surface lie many unresolved issues and tension from Lucy's childhood growing up in poverty and difficult circumstances in Amgash, Illinois.

 

Lucy's troubled childhood is slowly revealed as the novel unfolds. Lucy and her mother will be discussing a neighbor, only to have Lucy share with the reader a small aside that reveals itself to be an emotional bombshell to the reader. Yet underneath both the idle chatter and heartbreaking memoires, this is the story of love; "This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly" 107). This unspoken love is felt in the bravery of a mother who takes an airplane to New York to see her daughter even though she has never been in a plane before, "'Was it scary getting a taxi, Mom?' She hesitated, and I felt that I saw the terror that must have visited her" (8). This fear, conquered out of love, is important to remember when Lucy also relates heartbreaking stories from her childhood and when she tells the reader that her parents refuse to acknowledge her husband or children.

 

In the end, there is no true resolution between Lucy and her mother. But I think that's another one of Lucy's points - not every gulf between two individuals can be bridged and loving someone does not always mean fixing them or having a happy ending. Rather than looking to her family, Lucy must seek peace and resolution concerning her childhood inside herself. A resolution and connection that she seeks through writing and sharing her story.

 

And thus this is also the story of how Lucy grew into a writer. "But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone. This is my point. And I thought: I will write and people will not feel so alone!" (24). The frame story, that Lucy, the novel's narrator is writing her memoir of her time in the hospital gave the novel an interesting focus on writing and Lucy growing in her confidence as a writer. It's fitting that Lucy turns to writing because she grew up in a family filled with silences and unspoken emotions. Lucy's father is haunted by his experiences in the war, her mother is incapable of showing affection toward her children, and Lucy is unable to bridge this gulf between them, to find answers to her questions about her childhood and family. So instead, she writes and shares her story.

 

This was a deeply introspective and lonely novel. I felt as if I could feel the cold hallways of the hospital at night as Lucy spoke to the reader. "Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me" (41). A lovely, haunting story about childhood pain that shapes the entirety of Lucy's life and choices.

 

Stars: 4