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My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash, #1)

Elizabeth Strout

Start date: July 15, 2016

Finish date: August 1, 2016

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Barb

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Reading List

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What Members Thought

Jan 27, 2016 Dottie rated it liked it

Shelves: own, 2016

I obviously found it a rapid read and interesting in themes and characters though I suspect the varied lengths of the segments might annoy some readers, I felt they added to the heft of the story which was on its own hefty enough. The mother -daughter tale unfolds within a series of events and times which add texture to the ups and downs of that relationship. I've not read others of her works even though the opportunity to do so has certainly arisen - just hadn't joined in. I suspect this book w ...more

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Aug 31, 2017 Lauren rated it liked it

Subtle, opaque, with moments of great beauty and insight. Stout's books are all about the characters, not plot. I loved "Olive Kitteridge" and thought I had a high tolerance for character-driven books, but after reading "Lucy Barton" I'm thinking perhaps one can have too much of a good thing. I found myself wanting a bit more plot here, a story to grab onto. ...more

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Sep 12, 2018 Inder rated it it was ok

Shelves: 21st-century, fiction, midwest, new-york, read-2018

Novels about dysfunctional families (and not much else) aren't really my thing, therefore, this book was not really my thing. I realize this is a genre that many really get a lot out of, and until I read this book, I didn't even fully realize myself that it is a genre I tend to stay away from. I picked this book up because I had heard good things about it, even though I didn't know what it was about. If I had read more about it, I probably would have passed it over. That little self-discovery wa ...more

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Sep 04, 2017 Joyce rated it liked it

Shelves: set-in-the-midwest

Was lucky enough to be on a cruise with Elizabeth Strout in July - I kid you not - where she did a book line with all the interested cruise members around her new book Anything is Possible. Figure out pretty quickly that this book is tied into that book, so I stopped reading Anything is Possible and went back to My Name is Lucy Barton. It is an odd little book - doesn't take more than an afternoon to read and more or less demands to be read all at once. If anything, it is more a woman's musings ...more

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May 19, 2016 Jane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recentfiction, read-this-book-again

Spoilers:

I needed to read Lucy Barton again after reading the book of linked stories called Anything is Possible by the same author, about many of the characters that Lucy and her mother talk about as Lucy lies in her hospital bed.

I loved it just as much this time. There is a tentativeness about the narrator's voice that Strout captures perfectly. As though Lucy's voice is exactly the voice of a child who has been hungry and poor and abused and locked in a truck when her parents needed to leave Spoilers:

I needed to read Lucy Barton again after reading the book of linked stories called Anything is Possible by the same author, about many of the characters that Lucy and her mother talk about as Lucy lies in her hospital bed.

I loved it just as much this time. There is a tentativeness about the narrator's voice that Strout captures perfectly. As though Lucy's voice is exactly the voice of a child who has been hungry and poor and abused and locked in a truck when her parents needed to leave her in order to go to work.

Here are some passages that grabbed me: Molla "told me she hated her mother terrifically, and told me the whole story again as though she had not told it to me before, how much she hated her mother, and when she had had her babies she had to see a psychiatrist because she was saddened by everything her mother had not given her....recording this now, I think of something Sarah Payne had said at the writing class in Arizona. "You will have only one story," she had said. "You'll write your one story many ways. Don't ever worry about story. You'll have only one."

"I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer. And I think how I did not go to visit my brother and sister and my parents because I was always working on a story and there was never enough time...later I knew that if I stayed in my marriage I would not write another book, not the kind I wanted to, and there is that as well. But really, the ruthless-ness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can't bear to go--to Amgash, Illinois--and I will not stay in a marriage when I don't want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go! This is the ruthlessness, I think. My mother told me in the hospital that day that I was not like my brother and sister: "Look at your life right now. You just went ahead and...did it." Perhaps she meant that I was already ruthless. Perhaps she meant that, but I don't know what my mother meant.

Chrissie said, not long ago, about the husband I have now: 'I love him, Mom, but hope he dies in his sleep and then my stepmom can die too, and you and Dad will get back together...I thought, I did this to my child. Do I understand that hurt my children feel? I think I do, though they might claim otherwise. But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can't even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mind, this is mine, this is mine.

I couldn't stop reading this book. It's deceptively simple and beautifully written. About mothers and children. About childhood and the heartbreak that childhood can be. Lucy's childhood is particularly heartbreaking. But it speaks to the universal element of heartbreak in childhood. And also to forgiveness. I loved this book.

One beautiful piece of the book is the fact that it is about writing and memory. Lucy, who narrates the story, is never sure is she is accurately recalling the stories she remembers of her childhood, or the conversations she's had with her mother. Remembering talking about Kathy Nicely whose husband won't take her back: "He'll be sorry. I tell you he will." And my mother said, "I suspect she's the one who's sorry." But maybe that wasn't what my mother said. This is a recurring refrain as a chapter ends. May 19 2016 ...more

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