My Name Is Lucy Barton

This book resonated more strongly with me after I finished it than while I was reading it. As I read, it seemed as if not much was happening. It turns out that much was going on, both off-stage and in the halting conversations and pained silences that make up much of the surface plot. This effect is magnified by the understated voice of the narrator-protagonist, Lucy. Much is told by inference, so that I was unaware of the emotional weight behind the words, almost childlike in their simplicity. Her deeply observed insights snuck up on me, such as, “It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government—education, food, rent subsidies—are the ones who are most apt to find fault with show more the whole idea of government.” This sweeping criticism is immediately followed by what I thought of as a typical Lucyism: “I understand this in a way.”

The events are easily summarized. A routine appendix removal leads to a seven-week hospital stay. Lucy’s mother, who has never flown, arrives to keep vigil for five days, then leaves as abruptly as she came after the two achieve an oblique, unacknowledged reconciliation (they never address “the Thing,” something—abuse?—that happened to Lucy and somehow involved her PTSD-suffering father). Lucy’s favorite neighbor dies of AIDS. Lucy walks out on her marriage. She finds ersatz father-and-mother figures in the doctor who visits her daily during her hospital stay and in an older writer.

In a pomo touch, this book turns out to be about itself — that is, the clash of innocence and experience that Lucy dispassionately reports, thus turning it into this book. It’s about what it takes to be a writer; Lucy calls it ruthlessness, but it strikes me more as compassionate selfishness.

“I kept thinking,” Lucy reflects toward the end of the book, “how the five of us had had a really unhealthy family, but I saw then too how our roots were twisted so tenaciously around one another’s hearts.” Above all, this book is about imperfect people loving imperfect people. show less

This novel is short and deceptively simple. On the surface, it is about Lucy Barton, who gets a visit from her mother while she is in hospital recovering from a surgery; a mother she has not seen for three years. Beneath the surface, Lucy’s flashbacks reveal details about her childhood that are sometimes chilling and always sad. No surprise, her difficult childhood has wormed its way into her adult life and left her with problems that sometimes hamper and often confuse her.

What was most striking to me was how positive Lucy managed to be despite her bad beginnings. She had succeeded in escaping a very limiting situation and making her own life and that of her children better, and she had direction and purpose. She seemed not to need to show more blame anyone, but rather to improve her own lot at no one else’s expense. How brave must you be when you have to reject the script that has been written for you and write another for yourself on a blank page? To do this when you have never been given the tools to work with is even more grueling.

Strout has an ability to look well beneath the surface of a person while seeming to only lift a small corner of their veil. It is only when you have laid the book down that you realize how deep the insights and revelations go. show less

Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, is causing a sensation among readers and critics, as well it might. In its halting, diffident tones, it elucidates one woman’s struggle to understand her past, her family, and especially her mother. It’s a book in which human emotion and motivation must be guessed at - the first-person protagonist, Lucy, keeps guessing throughout, including trying to puzzle out her mother while she’s standing in the same room with her. The whole is memorable, affecting, and somehow ennobling.

Lucy went into the hospital a long time ago, to have her appendix out, but mysterious complications arise in surgery’s wake. Her mother surprises her (at Lucy’s husband’s urging and financial show more support) by paying a visit to her there. It isn’t necessarily what they say to each other, but more how they talk through the sometimes difficult history, the haunting memories each has of Lucy’s youth. These plain, charming conversations lead to recollections and speculation, and they lead Lucy to writing her reaction. She recalls features of her childhood and her brother and sister; she remembers having to fake being an adult in modern society because she came out of her childhood with almost no understanding of modern beliefs and attitudes.

Lucy Barton is a remarkable character: endearing, self-deprecating, successful and worldly in spite of the emotional poverty of her childhood. Her voice and her observations, and her brutal honesty with herself form this entire book, and it all works superbly. Ms. Strout has clothed the narrative in two shades, it seems to me, and reflects them off the iconic Chrysler Building, which is visible from Lucy’s hospital room. During the day, the building’s ornate top fades into the late spring sky, its colors unremarkable. At night though, the shiny symbol of humanity’s hopeful, upward urges takes over, and rises above the glittering streets below. This convoluted yet graceful talisman gathers up and distills the complex, roiling human strivings of the mortals below; it announces that Lucy, even with her bleak childhood, has a noble, creative spirit, and especially that she understands and cares about the suffering of others. Beneath the surface of bland language and lack of confidence lies the world’s fullest complement of intelligence and curiosity and charity. It’s Lucy’s recognition of this in herself and in others that lends this shining narrative its class and luminescence.

Take up My Name is Lucy Barton, do not let this opportunity pass by. Books this simple and effective and beautiful don’t come along very often. show less

An astonishing literary achievement. Two things stand out about "My Name is Lucy Barton". The first is its narrative frame, which is complex and effective enough to be mentioned in the same paragraph as, say, the little yarn that Marlowe tells about his trip up the Congo. "Lucy Barton" is a story about the book's title character becoming a writer, the novel itself being both a story about a writer's literary development and its final product. This is, in most ways, a profoundly unmagical book, but -- as Lucy faces the most painful elements of her past and attempts to come to grips with their essential meanings -- we see her write herself into existence as surely as an García Marquez character ever did. The fact that this these themes show more are dealt with using brief, pitch-perfect, and often deceptively simple sentences only makes what Strout's done here more impressive: Lucy Barton seems to emerge not from this novel's language but from its very structure. Perhaps most impressively, while both the novel and its main character develop, Strout's own authorial voice is almost completely obscured. It might be said that the author molds another, fictional author who then writes a book for her, an act of high-level literary ventriloquism that is breathtaking to behold. I suppose that Strout could have taken the easy way out by making her protagonist blandly admirable, making this a book about little more than overcoming hardship, the sort of literature-as-therapy thing that crowds the New Releases shelf these days. But it's clear, though, that Lucy is still scarred by her excruciatingly difficult past, which includes episodes of extreme poverty, abuse, self-doubt, interpolated with the kind of everyday disappointments and sad realizations even those with comfortable lives experience. Strout balances these elements perfectly, showing how both seemingly insignificant social slights and major life tragedies can stay with us for years. You could say that "My Name Is Lucy Barton" is a book about healing, but it's also about one woman's desperate battle to will herself into existence, which is a much less elegant affair. Lucy doesn't flinch at the ugly stuff here, and nether, to its credit, does this novel.

Strout's second achievement here is the title character herself. When the book ends, Lucy isn't without doubts and regrets, and I'm not even sure that every reader will find her particularly likable, but it's hard to deny that she is, well, mature. She's also -- and I consider this high praise indeed -- as gorgeously imperfect and wholly unforgettable a character as, say, Peggy Cort, who we meet in Elizabeth McCracken's "The Giant's House" or the title character of Mary Gaitskill's "Veronica". I'm not the kind of reader who tends to enjoy characters in and of themselves, but while Strout's account of how Lucy's personality and her literary voice emerge is easy to admire, there's also something about Lucy herself -- her resilience, her clear-sightedness, her honesty -- that gives this book the sort of emotional heft that a mere creative exercise would lack. There is real feeling and beauty here. To put it another way, this is, in other words, a great novel. Highly recommended. show less

A preface I suspect one story ruined Olive Kitteridge for me. I won a copy of the book as an LT Early Reviewer in 2008, not knowing anything about the author or even whether or not the book was just junk. It's been a while, but I recall the stories were soft and subtle, so subtle that I would miss key points. There are 13 loosely connected stories. The one I didn't like is titled A Different Road, where Olive gets caught up in a brutal violent event. Strout doesn't change tone for this story. Like the others, the prose is soft and subtle, and that bothered me. I felt it read false. I've avoided Strout since, and felt surprised by how successful she has been. (I was much gentler in my 2008 review than I am in my lingering limited memory. show more https://www.librarything.com/review/24291745 )

48. My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
published: 2016
format: 189-page Kindle ebook
acquired: October 2 read: Oct 2-6 time reading: 3:01, 1.0 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: Contemporary Fiction theme: Booker 2022
locations: New York City, rural Illinois
about the author: born in Maine, 1956.

I read this because Oh William! is on the Booker 2022 longlist (and shortlist), and is part of the Lucy Barton quartet. My Name is Lucy Barton is the first. I plan to read at least the first 3.

Most of this book takes place with Lucy telling us about her prolonged time in a New York a hospital bed, the Chrysler Building out the window, talking to her mother about nothing. While talking about nothing they also talk bitterly and lovingly about everything difficult in their lives, past and present. Poverty, marital strife, and PTSDM come up, along with their hopelessly strained relationship, without ever being directly addressed in their talk. It's cathartic and bitter. I loved it, and loved Lucy.

I was so worried I would not like this that I started with a free amazon sample, allowing myself to jettison it. But this is a much bolder work than the other I read by Strout, [Olive Kitteridge]. An artist of subtlety, she didn't stick to that here. She puts that in, and then tells the reader exactly what she's doing, undoes it. She even brings in a literary workshop experience to tell us exactly what she's doing. I loved all that.

For what it's worth, Lucy is a child of Anne Tyler's Pearl Tull, the narrator of Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. She has nearly the same voice: direct, blunt, narrow focused, dealing with the need to be kind to her needy children and family while also dealing straight on with life. Lucy is more tender, but I couldn't help hearing them both while reading. I like them both.

I can't tell you who will like or not like this novel by Strout. But I'm really looking forward to the second book in this trilogy - [Anything is Possible], which maybe is apt expression of how readers might expect to respond to this. show less

A spare, melancholy book about the tension between feeling the impulse to precisely observe people and events and the elusive nature of memory; about how much you can feel for those whose lives briefly intersect with yours and whom you never see again, and the terrible push-pull between family members who find one another mutually incomprehensible. My Name is Lucy Barton is about bonds and isolation, explored as the eponymous narrator recounts both a lengthy stint she endured in hospital in New York in the '80s, and her impoverished and abusive childhood in '60s rural Illinois. Elizabeth Strout is very good at showing/not-showing the elisions, the sidlings up to and away from the painful things. As I read I found myself admiring show more Strout's restraint as a writer. However, although I liked the novel and the unresolved nature of the ending clearly signposts the further books that are to come in this series, I don't find myself pulled to continue reading about Lucy and her family—in a strange way, I think My Name is Lucy Barton told me everything I need to know about them. show less

Love this novel.

Beautifully stark, real and raw, and brief descriptions of poverty, neglect, emotional need, fear, loneliness and love. Its painful to read the damage hurtful people inflict on those viewed as poor, or perceived as other. And how alone we truly each are.

Lucy's sensitivity and introspection allows her to recognize other human beings who have experienced shame, loneliness or degradation without needing to know their specific stories. She also deeply respects and loves those who have protected her like a teacher who reprimanded classmates who were mocking Lucy, as well as the doctor who provided more than just excellent treatment when she was seriously ill.

Her deprived childhood lead to her strong sensitivity opened her show more up to recognizing, seeing and feeling beauty in people, art and literature. And made her capable of becoming successful at writing, and independent. And know when it was time to leave her marriage.

This book strikes my heart, my soul and reminds me of the strength of words. A masterpiece. show less