Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month forMarch (2017)
Longlisted for theMan Booker Prize2016
This must be the way that most of us manoeuvre through the world,half knowing,half not,visited by memories that can't possibly be true... So much of life seems speculation.
My Name is Lucy Barton is a perfect crystallisation of quiet,subtly brilliant talent from one of America's finest contemporary writers.
Lucy Barton has spent her life running away from her past; from an isolated,penurious upbringing in Illinois where she and her siblings often went hungry. Now Lucy has moved through a faltering marriage to a carefully constructed new life in New York as a writer,replacing rural,open skylines for the Chrysler Building looming large on a tightly enclosed horizon.
When Lucy finds herself recovering in hospital,she is visited unexpectedly by the mother she hasn't seen for many years. As the two of them talk,a seam of memory is opened wide,forcing Lucy to confront the past she has struggled so hard to keep at bay. As old tensions rise to the surface Lucy tries to accept what her life really amounts to; the many roles she has played,the people she has loved,abandoned and betrayed.
At heart,this is a book about women's lives,about mothers and daughters and the brittle love that somehow endures beyond distance,longing,pain and loss.
In Lucy Barton,Strout has created an everywoman for our time; tenderly perceptive,humanly frail and utterly unforgettable.
'It is a study of filial love and of how our upbringing impacts on our futures. It is also gorgeously written and often very funny. I read it over a few hours last Saturday and was thunderstruck by its gentle power.'- Chris White,Waterstones'Fiction Buyer
Born in Portland,Maine,Elizabeth Strout has spent her early life in New England before moving to New York. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her third novel Olive Kitteridge which was subsequently made into an award-winning drama by HBO.
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780241248782Number of pages: 208Weight: 160 gDimensions: 196 x 128 x 13 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
"I am deeply impressed. Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening,from a perfect attunement to the human condition,from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue. I have never read her before and I knew within a few sentences that here was an artist to value and respect." - Hilary Mantel
"Strout's best novel yet" - Ann Patchett
"An exquisite novel... in its careful words and vibrating silences,My Name Is Lucy Barton offers us a rare wealth of emotion,from darkest suffering to -'I was so happy. Oh,I was happy'. - simple joy." - Claire Messud,New York Times Book Review
"So good I got goosebumps... a masterly novel of family ties by one of America's finest writers." - Sunday Times
"My Name is Lucy Barton confirms Strout as a powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships... Deeply affecting novel...visceral and heartbreaking...If she hadn't already won the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge this new novel would surely be a contender." - Observer
Hypnotic...yielding a glut of profoundly human truths to do with flight,memory and longing Mail on Sunday This is a book you'll want to return to again and again and again Irish Independent
Slim and spectacular...My Name Is Lucy Barton is smart and cagey in every way. It starts with the clean,solid structure and narrative distance of a fairy tale yet becomes more intimate and improvisational,coming close at times to the rawness of autofiction by writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard and Rachel Cusk. Strout is playing with form here,with ways to get at a story,yet nothing is tentative or haphazard. She is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times.... Washington Post
Her concise writing is a masterclass in deceptive simplicity...Strout writes with an exacting rhythm,with each word and clause perfectly placed and weighted and each sentence as clear and bracing as grapefruit. It's a small masterpiece Daily Mail
This short,simple,quiet novel wriggles its way right into your heart and stays there Red A beautifully taut novel Guardian
Agleam with extraordinary psychological insights...delicate,tender but ruthless reveries Sunday Express
An eerie,compelling novel,its deceptively simple language is a'slight rush of words'which hold much more than they seem capable of containing...This novel is about the need to create a story we can live with when the real story cannot be told... Financial Times
This is a glorious novel,deft,tender and true. Read it Sunday Telegraph
Plain and beautiful...Strout writes with an extraordinary tenderness and restraint - Kate Summerscale One of this year's best novels: an intense,beautiful book about a mother and a daughter,and the difficulty and ambivalence of family life - Marcel Theroux
Elizabeth Strout
Known for her meticulous portraits of community life in small-town New England,Elizabeth Strout is one of America's finest living novelists. Her works include the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Olive Kitteridge as well as The Burgess Boys,My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible. In 2019 she returned to the character of Olive Kitteridge and her community for the follow-up book,Olive,Again.
Visit the Elizabeth Strout author page
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