[In Memorium Regina][WPF] My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout - 4 stars

[Theresa]

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.

Regina's 3 star review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...