Elizabeth Strout

The cascade of celebratory reviews and committed Elizabeth Strout fans which greeted the publication of My Name Is Lucy Barton buoyed this extraordinary novel to the #1 slot on the New York Times bestseller list in its first week of on-sale in hardcover.

Lucy Barton, a writer, married with two young children, is in the hospital in New York City due to an infection from a simple appendix operation. (Her medical condition is incidental—it’s not about the illness.)

Her mother, whom she hasn’t seen in years, comes from Amgash, Illinois, to visit her, and sits by her bedside, reminiscing about people she and Lucy know from Lucy’s childhood, before Lucy went off to college and never returned.

The power from this extraordinary book is what remains unsaid between the lines of their gentle gossip, and what Lucy fills in for the reader about her troubled family, shamed by poverty, and how Lucy came to be a writer.

What makes the book reverberate with such feeling is the lacerating mother/daughter relationship. And yet at the end of the day you know how much these two women, regardless of the past, truly and deeply love each other.