1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
A simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the tender relationship between mother and daughter in this extraordinary novel by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys.
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasnt spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucys childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucys 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
There is not a scintilla of sentimentality in this exquisite novel. Instead, in its careful words and vibrating silences, My Name Is Lucy Barton offers us a rare wealth of emotion, from darkest suffering toI was so happy. Oh, I was happysimple joy. Claire Messud, The New York Times Book Review
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
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. Marion Winik, Newsday
