![]() ![]() The next time Lucy sees her mother, nine years later, she will be close to death and Lucy will be a successful writer. Her father is left unmentioned by both of them until her mother leaves, and then only briefly. Her mother stays for six days – bolting when it appears that Lucy may need surgery – filling their time together telling stories about people Lucy once knew all of whom seem to have suffered unhappiness in their marriages. Lucy has not seen her mother since she took her prospective husband home many years ago. After four weeks of boredom, loneliness and isolation she wakes up one morning to find her mother sitting opposite her bed. Lucy looks back on the nine weeks she spent in hospital over thirty years ago when a simple appendix removal resulted in an illness which resisted both diagnosis and cure. There’s much to think about in this slim novel in which the eponymous Lucy records her life, full of reflections, memories and ambiguities. If you’ve come across that already, you’ll know that her writing can be dark and so it is with My Name is Lucy Barton. That may be less true than it was with the release of HBO’s fine adaptation of Olive Kitteridgea few years back. ![]() ![]() ![]() My proof copy’s jacket proclaims her ‘the greatest American writer you’ve never heard of’. I’ve felt that way about Elizabeth Strout’s writing for some time. Sometimes you want to tell everyone you know just how good an author is, press their books into as many hands as possible. ![]()
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