My Name Is Lucy Barton

A Novel

By: Elizabeth Strout

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

Length: 4 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the tender relationship between mother and daughter in this extraordinary novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The New York Times Book Review • NPR • BookPage • LibraryReads • Minneapolis Star Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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.

Praise for My Name Is Lucy Barton

“A quiet, sublimely merciful contemporary novel about love, yearning, and resilience in a family damaged beyond words.”—The Boston Globe

“It is Lucy’s gentle honesty, complex relationship with her husband, and nuanced response to her mother’s shortcomings that make this novel so subtly powerful.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“A short novel about love, particularly the complicated love between mothers and daughters, but also simpler, more sudden bonds . . . It evokes these connections in a style so spare, so pure and so profound the book almost seems to be a kind of scripture or sutra, if a very down-to-earth and unpretentious one.”—Newsday

“Spectacular . . . Smart and cagey in every way. It is both a book of withholdings and a book of great openness and wisdom. . . . [Strout] is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times.”—Lily King, The Washington Post

“An aching, illuminating look at mother-daughter devotion.”—People

©2016 Elizabeth Strout (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"This story of family, poverty, aspirations, and obstacles is immediately gripping, thanks to the combination of Strout's high-quality prose and Kimberly Farr's nearly flawless performance." (AudioFile)

Exceptional

Well well-written account of a troubled life when even success can't erase the years of hurt, rejection and desire to be loved by the only ones that matter, family.

A story of all the places loves resides in

I didn't think I would like this story. Too domestic, too seeming to tug at the sleeve of sentimentality, I thought. Then in came the sullen mother, or was she hiding / mulling something she couldn't utter? Then came the daughters, little girls, who appeared to be so brave beyond their years. Still, and furthermore came the unnameable disquieting spells which sneak up on one on a rainy day and between all these elements (events and situations) of life I found myself listening intently to the narrative as it led me to the mirror. The mirror where you see yourself and if you look closer many other faces too. A universal story to me. A story full of truths, not all pleasant but necessary to confront. Layers falling away as life unfolds. A deliberate effort to see what is happening, to avoid the distraction. A deeper understanding of what life is, what it can be perhaps.

The language is simple and hence uncomplicated. Complicated enough is the inference of the longing to belong, to mean something to another - ones place even - and all this the author manages with simplicity and composure. Dignity.

Does this story have gravitational pull for me because here is a woman addressing her life with no fear for the eventual judgement? She realizes she is being judged and measured (like the encounter with a male figure while away in school, to name but one instance) but we see her lose her fear of this and in this she is a modern hero. Afterall, are not the vast swathes of Instagram culture an appeal to be seen in the favorable light, curated and varnished so that the judgement won't lead to being cancelled, or cast aside?

The performance allowed me to believe I was hearing the authors voice and that to me is in this type of literature a plus.

A real story.

Good storyline

Interesting story, I found that I could relate to it; always searching for that approval or love from a distant parent.

If you like depressing stories

Very dark and depressing but does provide a view regarding some lives that remain unfulfilled.

A story for writers of stories

I liked the way Strout explored the ambiguity of relationship with her imperfect mother. There were one or two aspects of the story that stretched credulity. I feel like I missed something about the hospitalization, about her failed marriage, the incompleteness of her mentor’s story. I learned a thing or two about fiction and that is a valuable lesson.

Poignant and beautiful

I was captivated by this story. Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors. Her understanding of the diversity of human characters and personalities, her compassion, her truth stating about life through those characters.

Because we all love imperfectly.

A character in My Name is Lucy Barton says "I like writers who try to tell you something truthful," and Elizabeth Strout has done just that. This book feels almost like the reader is being told a once-upon-a-time recounting of Lucy's life and relationships, in a personal, intimate conversation with her. It begins to feel like we are sitting at Lucy's bedside, along with her mother, as she recovers in the hospital. This experience is heightened by listening to the audiobook, with the excellent narration by Kimberly Farr.

“I write because I want the reader to read the book when they may need it,” Strout wrote in an email. “For example, when I first read ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’ I thought: ‘Wow, I really need this book!’ So I always hope that a reader will find the book when they need it, even if they didn’t know they needed it.”

And I did. I felt like Elizabeth Strout, through Lucy Barton, articulated and explained things I knew but couldn't express myself. The complexity of familial love, how things we wish we could hear from our loved ones just may not be possible for them to say, how we all love imperfectly, how we are all products of our background and experiences. I loved Olive Kitteridge, and My Name is Lucy Barton is even better.

Exquisitely Written...but Undeniably Sad

3.5 Stars. Beautifully written (Strout's gift with language is exquisite) but unstintingly sad, this rumination on life, love and family is almost painful to sit through. Oh, how I wanted Lucy Barton to have one (just one) moment of pure, unadulterated happiness. But, no.

Lucy Barton narrates her life by focusing on memories. She tells us how she grew up poor (so poor), how she was locked in her father's truck all day because she was too young to go to school and they had no one to watch her, how her parents refused to accept her husband because he was German, how her mother comes to visit her while she's in the hospital for an unexplained illness (Lucy is happy about this but then her mother leaves, which makes her sad all over again). Through these stories, we get a glimpse of Lucy's life, from child to adult.

I found the book almost oppressive in its sadness, despite the beautiful words created by Strout.

The narrator did a very nice job. She was clear and easy to understand and really worked hard on bringing emotion to the story.

My least favorite Elizabeth Strout book.

The story dragged on and on. I did finish it and am not sorry that I read it, but I have loved lol her other books.

A beautiful story with unforgettable characters.

in her latest, Elizabeth Strout returns to the style of Olive Kitteridge for another incredibly complex , beautiful novel of family life.