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My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash, #1)

Elizabeth Strout

Start date: July 16, 2017

Finish date: July 19, 2017

Discussion: July 2017: Award Winners

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July 2017: Award Winners

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By Anita · 1 post · 27 views

last updated Jul 01, 2017 03:06AM

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins 4 + stars again.
By Karin · 4 posts · 18 views

last updated Aug 07, 2017 12:41PM

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What Members Thought

Jun 12, 2017 Liz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley

I listened to this and it augmented the feeling that I was listening in on someone else’s conversation or being part of a one sided conversation. Like a conversation, the book meandered from thought to thought, bringing up different people and past events. This is the trademark of Elizabeth Strout's work, these somewhat interconnected stories.

I had read All Things Are Possible before this book, so a lot of the names felt like familiar old friends whose history I already knew.

Despite her strang ...more

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Feb 19, 2022 Theresa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: new-york, contemporary-general-fiction

Lucy is hospitalized in NYC for an extended period after an appendectomy. Her illness is mysterious but also concerning, evidenced by a low grade fever and inability to keep food down. She has a view from her hospital bed of the glorious Chrysler Building: The light from the Chrysler Building shone like the beacon it was, of the largest and best hopes for mankind and its aspirations and desire for beauty. It's the mid-1980s, before cellphones, email, laptop computers or electronic devices, addin Lucy is hospitalized in NYC for an extended period after an appendectomy. Her illness is mysterious but also concerning, evidenced by a low grade fever and inability to keep food down. She has a view from her hospital bed of the glorious Chrysler Building: The light from the Chrysler Building shone like the beacon it was, of the largest and best hopes for mankind and its aspirations and desire for beauty. It's the mid-1980s, before cellphones, email, laptop computers or electronic devices, adding a deep loneliness to Lucy's time in hospital. In fact loneliness is an ever present theme here: Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me. Luicy is a writer and that loneliness is that of the writer pursuing her craft, of a woman dealing with illness, of a woman in the middle of family and marriage. There is also the loneliness of death witnessed by Lucy.

But that is only part of the story. It's also the story of mothers and daughters. Lucy's mother comes to stay with her daughter at the hospital for 5 days. It is during this time that we learn most about Lucy herself and her background, her impoverished childhood and growth to adulthood, even her marriage. Her mother tells stories of people from her small home town, life lessons which balance happy and sad, prosperity and tragedy, and in the course of the telling, her mother shows Lucy just how our roots were twisted so tenaciously around one another’s hearts. It is about love, which is ugly and beautiful, which is expressed in ways that are often invisible to the recipient, even cruel, and rarely expressed in words.

I loved this, how sparing it is with words, yet still having a deep impact and depicting a complex emotional landscape. Lucy, her mother, her doctor were all so real to me. I loved the episodic style and how NYC was depicted so well in a few scenes. I recognized much - I too had an 'Aunt Seal' whose real name was Celia, and my mother in the last couple years of her life would tell me stories of neighbors and relatives that were her way of providing life lessons she knew she would not live to teach me later (my mother died when I was 23 after several years of illness). It was also one of the ways she showed her love - my family never tossed those words around but demonstrated by actions pretty much every day. This book is about love, about mothers and daughters, about family, about loneliness.

Yet, I could not bring myself to give it more than 4 stars. Despite the repeated messaging that as a writer, Lucy ruthlessly needed to tell her one story and that this was that story, I felt there was a hesitation, a veil, a holding back, a stopping just before truly telling that story. It imparted a sense of melancholy and - yes- loneliness to the writing It has left me thinking that perhaps a writer does have one story to tell but that story is never ruthlessly the full story. ...more

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Apr 26, 2023 Booknblues rated it really liked it

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, literary-fiction, health, family-relationships, 23-new, library-book, family

Elizabeth Strout is not an author I had been drawn to as the descriptions of her books never rang any bells for me, but then I read Olive Kitteridge and it changed my mind. I really loved it and I loved Olive as off putting as she seemed at times, I found a core of goodness which I admired because she so much reminded me of my mother.

When I picked up My Name Is Lucy Barton, I expected her to be another difficult character but this is not so. Perusing reviews about this book, I kept coming across ...more

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Mar 31, 2017 Regina Lindsey rated it liked it

Shelves: complex-woman, women, mothers-and-daughters, mother-daughter-relationships, adult-fiction, contemporary-fiction, dysfunctional-families, dysfunctional-family, familial-relationships, families

This is a reflection of Lucy Barton's life. The vast majority of the novella occurs while Lucy is undergoing a lengthy hospital recovery after a surgery. Her husband, William, has asked Lucy's mother, whom Lucy hasn't seen in years, to stay with Lucy. She does. The two visit, gossip, catch up on family, etc. all of which allows lugubrious life to unfold for the reader. If Lucy expected their reunion to end in rapprochement she was mistaken. Her mother seems wholly incapable of a nurturing relati ...more

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Jul 19, 2017 Barbara M rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: authors, poverty, families

Lucy Barton is telling this story of a time in her life when she was married, had two little girls, and was spending weeks in a hospital with a constant high temperature of unknown origin. She misses her children and her husband (who hates hospitals and avoids visiting).

This story is told from Lucy's future as an author, looking back to that earlier time. The memory of that time looms large in her life because her mother came to stay with her during the last part of that ordeal. She had not see ...more

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May 24, 2023 ☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ rated it it was amazing

Q:
This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation. (c)
Q:
Always, I have hated being cold. There are elements that determine paths taken, and we can seldom find them or point to them accurately, but I have sometimes thought how I w ...more

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Dec 15, 2016 Raine rated it really liked it

Shelves: goal-65-books-in-2016-read, acceptance, self-discovery, marriage, mothers-and-daughters

I enjoyed MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON as it was many stories rolled into one book. Lucy is sick and has to spend weeks in the hospital and her estranged mother comes and sits with her. That is just part of the story, as we get to see Lucy's future also after she recovers.

This book wasn't exciting, or it wasn't the type of book that I couldn't put down, but it is just the story of a regular life that I believe many people experience. Not too many people experience the perfect life, and Elizabeth Strou ...more

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Dec 13, 2016 Lynn Cutting rated it liked it

a bit of a strange story of a mother and a daughter. easy to read but a bit choppy. I liked the story but didn't like the way the author broke it up. ...more

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