My Name is Lucy Barton (2016)

Why this one?

I recently finished my run through the shortlisted books for the 2022 Booker, one of my favourites of which what Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William!, the third book in the Lucy Barton sequence of novels. While I didn’t feel like it was a realistic contender for the Prize, it introduced me to a writer whose style I loved and I wanted to explore further.

As a reminder, Elizabeth Strout (1956- ; active 1982- ) was born in Portland, Maine, USA. She studied law, receiving her J.D. from Syracuse College of Law, as well as spending time at Oxford in the UK. Her first short story was published by New Letters magazine in 1982, and continued to have short stories published in literary magazines.  She worked briefly in law and subsequently in teaching while working on her debut novel. 

Amy and Isabelle was published in 1998 and was a critical and commercial success, nominated for the 2000 Orange/Women’s Prize (won by Linda Grant’s When I Lived in Modern Times) and the Pen/Faulkner Prize as well as being dramatized for a TV movie. Her third novel, Olive Kitteridge, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2016 she published My Name is Lucy Barton, the first of (to date) four novels to feature the titular heroine. It was longlisted for the 2016 Booker, and was followed quickly by Anything is Possible (2017) which features interlinked short stories set around Barton’s hometown. Oh William! (published 2021) is a more fully-fledged return to Lucy’s own story, which has already been continued in 2022’s Lucy By the Sea, set during the pandemic. 

Thoughts, etc.

My Name is Lucy Barton introduces the New York-based author of its title. We find her recovering from an infection in hospital, where she is visited by her mother. Through their awkward but often moving interactions, and Lucy’s interior reflections, we learn - slowly, through drips of information - about Lucy’s troubled upbringing in the isolated rural town of Amgash, Illinois.

I’ve obviously come to this one via an unusual (though I suspect not unique) route. I loved the way Oh William! alluded to the previous Lucy stories while not giving away so much as to render returning to them pointless. That’s probably the main reason I jumped straight to this one after my 2022 shortlist read - I was fascinated to learn more about Lucy’s backstory and what led her to the life described in the third book.

What’s immediately surprising, coming to it the way I did, is that you’re not exactly met by an avalanche of fresh revelations. The gaps left by they later novel aren’t all filled by reading this one, and certainly not immediately. What you do learn comes slowly, gradually, painfully. Lucy, even more so than in Oh William!, is largely focused on taking the best that she can from the present moment. Her past is something she’d clearly rather not revisit, so when its defining elements do drip through - as asides, often throwaway comments - they’re all the more poignant and powerful.

You do, ultimately, learn more about the genuine hardship of her childhood, in ways that make aspects of her present-day life in Oh William! make more sense. I certainly noticed some criticism of the later book centring around it telling rather than showing the issues faced by Lucy in her youth. I think the context afforded by now having read this book makes that a little easier to understand. The voice of both novels is thoroughly Lucy’s, and while she’s keenly aware of the defining facts of her upbringing and at pains to highlight how they’ve made her who she is, any actual description of those facts is fraught with pain and trauma for her - there’s no wonder we don’t get much in the way of detail as a result.

For me, this is part of the appeal of the style of both novels - there’s as much in what’s withheld as there is in what’s told. Another case in point here is how much more I felt I understood the older William after reading this one - despite the fact that he’s hardly in it! His role at this point is defined by absence, leading Lucy to gather what crumbs of comfort she can from those who do keep her company.

Score

8

I didn’t love this quite as much as Oh William!, but it furthered my understanding of it and took me further into the world of a subtle, intriguing character expertluy crafted by a writer who I’m still keen to go deeper on.

Next up

Back into the Women’s Prize with the 2007 winner, Half of a Yellow Sun.