Review: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

4 stars for My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.

I see a pattern lately, I mean my reading pattern. First I revisit books that have been chucked under my list of Did Not Finish, now I am reading books that are grouped under my list of sunk cost, yes, books that I spent good money on. I know I have a problem, a happy one though, which is that I own dozens of books I have not read. These books of mine - most I bought from bookstores, some I received from friends and a few I took home from the bookshelf outside the library where people leave books they no longer want to keep - are my precious, my treasure trove of information. Well, I intend to read my books. Read them I shall. Some day. One day. All of them. It is just that I keep adding more books to my Reading List, and the books I want to read get reprioritised all the time.

I bought this book from a chain bookstore back in 2016. I bought it because it is written in first person and the blurb on the back of the book looks too good to be ignored. The book cover is simple and pleasing to the eye with one picture of a window frame within which are some buildings with small windows tinged with metallic blue. On flipping the cover, instead of a blank leaf, I am greeted with more pictures of similar looking high-rise buildings and more windows with tinges of metallic blue. It is then that I realise the rectangular window on the cover is actually a cutout through which I can see the specially printed leaf at the beginning of the book. What a simple yet lovely design!

My Name is Lucy Barton is a soulful tale of a story on family, loneliness, life's choices, regrets and yearnings. Though a family story, the novel's central theme is actually the complicated love between a mother and her daughter. It is gripping, intense and emotionally complex; one that reminds me of my own mother-daughter relationship.

It is remarkable that the author can grasp so well, the often unspoken intricacies of human relationships and put them down in words. I feel for Lucy Barton and I understand the way she identifies with her mother in the book. It is not unusual that Lucy has not the slightest inkling of the life lived by her mother that leads eventually to the way her mother treats her. How many of us actually make the effort to learn about the lives lived by our parents? This lack of understanding oftentimes leads to regrets when one looks back in life. The story ending is kind of sad to me too, but then again, I think that is only the author putting life the way it just is.

As I see it, this book will appeal most to female readers; not just any female readers but those who have been through some seasons in life. They will read and they will understand and they will appreciate My Name is Lucy Barton.


Publisher: Penguin Books; 1st Edition edition
Publication date: 1 Jan 2016

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Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. 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. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.

*Blurb from author's website*

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