If you loved Olive Kitteridge, you’ll love this. This is a super fast read - less than 4 hours on audio at 1x, but it’s worth it. She also deftly tackles the complexities and conflicting emotions of changing class, breaking free from a familial cycle of poverty. This book is no different the depth of Lucy’s relationships not only with her mother but also her ex-husband, her children, her brother and father, and even her West Village neighbors are rich with joy, pain, and humanity. And her writing is always warm and simple on the surface, but layered with emotion and nuance underneath. I don’t know how Elizabeth Strout manages to write characters that feel 100% fully formed from the first sentence they speak, but it’s really amazing. It was essentially the only interaction she had with her mother in her adult life, ever since she left her family’s cycle of extreme poverty and abuse to go to college on a scholarship and then moved to New York to become a writer.

She’s looking back to the period of time when she was in the hospital recovering from surgery and her mother came to sit by her bedside. My Name Is Lucy Barton is a slim, fun-structured novel narrated by (as you might guess) the main character, Lucy Barton. Well, having the third book in this Amgash series ( Oh William!) on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist was the kick in the pants I needed to get started! And, of course, I loved this one too. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.Įlizabeth Strout is one of those authors on my list - I read and loved Olive Kitteridge, and I know I’ll love more of her backlist, but I just haven’t gotten there. 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. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her.

Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. 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. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration.

Lucy barton series order