My Name Is Lucy Barton

#1 NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER 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 Prize winning 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 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
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 to I was so happy. Oh, I was happy simple 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

Potent with distilled emotion. Without a hint of self-pity, Strout captures the ache of loneliness we all feel sometimes. Time
An aching, illuminating look at mother-daughter devotion. People
A quiet, sublimely merciful contemporary novel about love, yearning, and resilience in a family damaged beyond words. The Boston Globe
Sensitive, deceptively simple . . . 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. . . . [It s] more complex than it first appears, and all the more emotionally persuasive for it. San Francisco Chronicle
Strout maps the complex terrain of human relationships by focusing on that which is often unspoken and only implied. . . . Apowerful addition to Strout s body of work. The Seattle Times
Impressionistic and haunting . . . [Strout]reminds us of the power of our stories and our ability to transcend our troubled narratives. Miami Herald
Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening, from a perfect attunement to the human condition, from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue. Hilary Mantel
Magnificent. Ann Patchett